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The KING 5 TREASURIES 

OF LITERATURE 




GENERAL EDITOR 
Sir AT QUILLER COUCH 



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NEW YORJC E-P-DUTTON AND COMPAN 




M-DENT & SONS LTD * LONDON # TORONTO* 



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Sole Agent for Scotland 

THE GRANT EDUCATIONAL CO. LTD. 

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CONTENTS 



Addison, Joseph (under signature of Ralph Crotchet) 
Proposal for the Control of Street Cries (1711) 

Ballad, A. In Praise of London 'Prentices, Shrove Tuesda\ 
1617 

Barbauld, Letitia. Samuel Richardson . 

Barrie, J. M. First Impressions of London 

Bavley, John. Sir Walter Raleigh in the Tower 

Beaconsfield, Lord. Beaconsfield on our Town-Planning 



Borrow, George. Cheapside . 

George Borrow on London Bridge 
Boswell, James. Dr. Johnson 



Camden, William. Queen Eleanor's Memorial at Charing 
Cross ........ 

Carlyle, Thomas. Pride's Purge .... 
This Bauble! April 20th, 1653 .... 
Cavendish, G. Wolsey in Whitehall .... 
Chambers, Robert. The Gunpowder Plot (1605) 
Cherbury, Lord Herbert of. Lord Herbert of Cherbury at 

Court ........ 

Clarendon, Earl of. Escape of Charles I. (1647) 
Collet. Sir Richard Whittington .... 

Crotchet, Ralph. Proposal for the Control of Street Cries 

(I7ii) 

De Ros, Lord. Colonel Blood steals the Crown Jewels . 
Dickens, Charles. The Artful Dodger at Bow Street . 

Dickens as a Reporter ...... 

A London Fog ....... 

Dryden, John. Within Sound of the Guns (1667) 

5 



242 
244 

177 



Brooke, Henry. Unrehearsed Humours of Bartholomew Fair 168 



17 
98 
100 
38 
64 

60 
88 
29 

147 

128 

254 
257 
259 
125 



6 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

PAGE 

Elyot, Sir Thomas. Prince Hal and Judge Gascoigne . 30 

Emerson*, Ralph Waldo. Emerson at Printing-Home Square 236 
Evelyn, J. Notes on the Fire . . . . . .118 

William at St. James's . . . . . . .142 

Fielding, H. Fielding at Wapping . . . . .164 

Fitzstephen, William. River-Sports in the Twelfth Century. 17 

Forster, John. Swift at St. James's Coffee-House . . 155 

Sir Joshua Reynolds " At Home " at Leicester Square . 181 

Fox, George. George Fox, the Quaker, Interviews Cromwell . 103 

Fox on the Fire ........ 125 

Froissart, Jean. The Tyler Rebellion, 1381 ... 19 

Gaskell, Mrs. Charlotte Bronte at Willis's Room?, St. James's 250 
Green, J. R. Dean Colet of St. Paul's .... 50 

Hall, Edward. The Cade Rebellion, 1450 .... 34 

Harrison, William. Parliament in Shakespeare's Time . 56 

The Thames in Shakespeare's Time . . . . .58 

Hawkins, F. W. Edmund Kean's Debut at Drury Lane (1814) 211 
Heywood, Thomas. The City's Welcome to Queen Elizabeth 

(1558) 53 

Hume, David. Richard III. of Gloucester seizes the Crown 

(1483) 36 

Hunt, Leigh. Leigh Hunt at Christ's Hospital . . . 191 

Burlington Arcade and House, Piccadilly . . , . 208 

Hutchinson, Lucy. Charles I. and His Judges at Westminster 

Hall 91 

Irving, Washington. A Legend of St. Peter and Bishop 

Mellitus 13 

Washington Irving visits the Abbey . . . . .216 

Jesse, J. H. Charles II. and St. James's Park . . . 136 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel. The Gordon Riots . . . 173 

Knight, C. Chivalry on I ondon Bridge .... 25 
The Strand Maypole 87 



CONTENTS 

Lamb, Charles. " The Londoner " 

Lytton, Bulwer. A Fifteenth- Century Picture . 

Macaulav, Lord. Downfall of James II. . 

William at St. James's ...... 

Judge Jeffreys Discovered at Wapping (1688) 

At the Trial of Warren Hastings, Westminster Hall, 1788 
Martineau, Harriet. New London Bridge 

New Houses of Parliament ..... 
Meredith, George. The Fire Brigade 
Miller, Hugh. Hugh Miller at St. Paul's . 

North, Roger. Death of Charles II. and the Proclamation 
James II. (1685) ...... 

Nugent. Charles I. in the House, ±th January, 1642 

Pepvs, S. Notes on St. Paul's School .... 

Plague Notes in Pepys ...... 

Pope, Alexander. Pope stays at Hampton Court 

Prior, Sir James. Edmund Burke and Charles James Fox 

Quincey, Thomas de. De Quincey in Oxford Street . 
De Quincey at St. Paul's ..... 

Ruskin, John. Turner and Covent Garden . 

Schoelcher, V. Handel and the Foundling Hospital . 
Scott, Sir Walter. The Strand in the Reign of James I. 

A Morning Scene in St. James's Park 
Shakespeare, William. Downfall of Cardinal Wolsey 

Smith, Horace. Jocelyn fleeing from the Bailiffs Like 
Refuge at John Milton's ..... 

South ey, Robert and C. C. Southey at Westminster School 

Stanhope, Earl of. Pitt — Nelson — Wellington, at Downin 
Street ........ 

Stanley, A. P. William the Conqueror Crowned . 
Queen Caroline ....... 

Staunton, H. Loyal Westminster .... 



page 
199 



8 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

PAGE 

Stow, John. The Guildhall ...... 26 

Strickland, Agnes. The " Blue Ring " Incident . . 62 

Talfourd, Sir T. N. At No. 4, Inner Temple Lane . . 202 

Thackeray, W. M. Addison at Home .... 152 

The Mall as a Promenade . . . . . .261 

Founder's Day at the Charterhouse ..... 263 

Death of the Colonel ....... 267 

Waller, Edmund. On the Statue to King Charles I. at Charing 

Cross ......... 109 

Whitelocke, Bulstrode. A Court Mask in the Reign of 

Charles I. ........ 76 

Wordsworth, W. On Westminster Bridge .... 197 

Yonge, Charlotte M. Sir Thomas More's Fate . . 45 



Note. — The extract entitled " The Fire Brigade," from 
George Meredith's Harry Richmond (p. 267), is printed by 
consent of Messrs. Constable and Co., Ltd., London, and 
Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. The passage 
from Sir J. M. Barrie's When a Man's Single entitled " First 
Impressions of London " is used by consent of Messrs. 
Hodder and Stoughton, London, and Messrs. Charles Scrib- 
ner's Sons. Messrs. Macmillan and Co. have also granted 
their kind permission for the inclusion of the short extract 
from J. R. Green's Short History of the English People (p. 50), 
and Mr. John Murray leave to use the extract from John 
Forster's Life of Swift printed on p. 155. 




INTRODUCTION 




A few years ago, before the war and the aftermath of 
the war filled the daily newspapers, one of our journals 
printed an entertaining correspondence on this subject — 
" The dullest place in England." A strong claim was 
preferred for this dubious distinction for March in 
Cambridgeshire, but the claim was vigorously contested 
because in March " you can always watch the engine 
shunt." 

There is a prodigious mass of literature on London — 
a good deal more, in fact, than the catalogues of some 
fine country libraries contain. An attempt to bring that 
vast array within the limits of a small volume is like the 
endeavour of a tiny infant to span two octaves; but in 
the following pages enough is given to show that in 
London men have been able for many centuries to 
" watch the engine shunt." 

London is above everything else a gigantic accu- 
mulation of personal experiences. The list of men of 
genius — it includes the names of Spenser, Jonson and 
Milton in earlier times, and those of Browning, Ruskin, 
and Beaconsfield in more modern years — who were 
actually born in London, and spent years of activity 
there, would surprise those who had not thought pre- 
viously on the matter. If to such names are added those 
who became Londoners by adoption — men who studied 
in the schools, wrote for or played on the stage, con- 
tended in Parliament or in Fleet Street, or languished 
in prison — we perceive that quite a multitude of brilliant 

9 



io LONDON IN LITERATURE 

men and women have, beneath the sounding-board of 
this city, spoken to the whole Empire. The story of 
London forms a very large slice of our national history. 
If we agree — as we dc — that every Briton should be 
familiar with his own country's history, it becomes 
obvious that London deserves a foremost place in our 
interest. 

We all know the citizen who will pull you up in the 
Borough High Street, and pointing down the yard of an 
old coaching-inn, exclaim, " That is where Mr. Pickwick 
first met Sam Weller! " but there are still Londoners 
who do not appreciate the significance of their city. It 
is hardly credible that a Cockney who knows every 
dock, wharf and jetty between London Bridge and 
Tilbury can feel as strange in Westminster as Captain 
Cook felt when he landed in Hawaii; or that one who 
sees the cross of St. Paul's every day is an utter stranger 
to its aisles. Indifference bred of familiarity is not, of 
course, confined to the Metropolis. The writer remem- 
bers meeting in the gallery of the House of Commons 
a visitor from Haworth, in Yorkshire, where the only 
features of more than local interest are a parsonage, 
an inn and a museum; but when this sightseer was 
asked if he had visited the Bronte Museum, he said 
"No!" Many a native Londoner if asked a similar 
question about places which travellers from afar do 
not miss would have to give a like answer. Even after 
compulsory education has been in vogue for half a 
century some are more familiar with the joy-wheel at 
Loughton than with the far deeper joy of exploring the 
scenes where you can almost hear the laughter of 
Shakespeare, and the heavy tread of Dr. Johnson. Still 
it is encouraging to know that teachers who realise the 
educational value of a stroll round London commonly 



INTRODUCTION n 

pilot their pupils to points where history was enacted; 
and, no doubt, by a little judicious whetting of the 
appetite the day will come when a London County 
Council scholar will pray for the mountains to fall on 
him who cannot instantly give an intelligent account 
of Wine Office Court, the Rosetta Stone, and the Golden 
Grasshopper above the Royal Exchange. 

During many a period of suspense when Zeppelins 
were on their way to London, the writer resisted anxiety 
by re-reading James's Psychology. In that book there 
is something to the effect that we see just what the 
brain is prepared to see. Thus a totally uninformed 
man would pass from the Bank to Charing Cross without 
observing anything worth mentioning; while another 
whose mind was well stored would, especially on a 
first visit, be in a state of exaltation. Our country- 
cousins may not have the same kind of information 
which Branwell Bronte possessed, who was able, although 
he had never been in London, to direct a Londoner by 
a short cut from one place to another. It is often the 
case, though, that a provincial whose intelligence is 
attracted by the Metropolis is prepared beforehand to 
make the most of his time. He will probably be half- 
stunned with bewilderment as he emerges from the 
archway of St. Pancras Station, and filled with fear 
lest he shall be run down by a motor-bus, or have his 
purse stolen; but soon the great associations of this 
noble city will fill his mind with other thoughts. 

We can think of no better way of knowing London 
than by associating persons with places, or other persons. 
The old, wooden method of learning history by memor- 
ising dates of accessions and battles has gone by the 
board. We know that the life of a monarch is not 
essentially the history of England during the period of 



12 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

his reign. At the same time, if we cluster round the 
name of Henry VIII. the names of Wolsey, Sir Thomas 
More, Dean Colet, and, of course, Ann Boleyn; and if 
with Elizabeth we associate Shakespeare, Drake and 
Frobisher, Cecil, whose ears she boxed, Sir Thomas 
Gresham of the Royal Exchange, Raleigh, who spoilt 
his Sunday suit — not forgetting Mary Stuart; and if 
we proceed to visit the places frequented by these 
notabilities, both the persons and the places acquire a 
live interest. Suppose we think of literary circles — of 
the Addison and Steele circle, with Swift on the cir- 
cumference; of the Johnson circle, which embraced so 
many writers, statesmen, actors and artists of note; of 
the Lamb circle, whose levee was held in the Temple 
weekly; or of the Dickens and Thackeray circle, which 
included men of more than national fame; and then 
suppose we walk with Addison in the Haymarket, with 
Johnson in Fleet Street, with Lamb about the Temple 
Gardens, and with Dickens all over London — we are 
not only broadening our knowledge, but we are actually 
in sympathetic touch with men whose fame is our glory. 
Or, suppose we think of Parliament — but there ! Enough 
has been said to show that the secret of London is not 
to be sought, in its great age or its vast extent, but in 
the personal associations of those who have been 
honoured or disgraced in it. 

There are few pleasures equal to that of taking a 
stranger by the hand, and leading him to what every 
good Briton desires to see; but failing that, it is hoped 
that this volume will amuse and instruct Young England, 
and quicken in them a healthy curiosity about our 
Mother City and its literature. 




A LEGEND OF ST. PETER AND 
BISHOP MELLITUS 

Toward the end of the sixth century, when Britain, 
under the dominion of the Saxons, was in a state 
of barbarism and idolatry, Pope Gregory the Great, 
struck with the beauty of some Anglo-Saxon youths 
exposed for sale in the market-place at Rome, con- 
ceived a fancy for the race, and determined to send 
missionaries to preach the gospel among these comely 
but benighted islanders. . . . 

One of the most prominent converts was Segebert 
or Sebert, king of the East Saxons, a nephew of 
Ethelbert. He reigned in London, of which Mellitus, 
one of the Roman monks who had come over with 
Augustine, was made bishop. 

Sebert, in 605, in his religious zeal, founded a 
monastery by the river-side to the west of the city, 
on the ruins of a temple of Apollo, being, in fact, 
the origin of the present pile of Westminster Abbey. 

Great preparations were made for the conse- 
cration of the church, which was to be dedicated to 
St. Peter. On the morning of the appointed day, 
Mellitus, the bishop, proceeded with great pomp 
and solemnity to perform the ceremony. 

13 



i 4 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

On approaching the edifice he was met by a 
fisherman, who informed him that it was needless 
to proceed, as the ceremony was over. The bishop 
stared with surprise, when the fisherman went on 
to recite that the night before, as he was in his boat 
on the Thames, St. Peter appeared to him, and told 
him that he intended to consecrate the church him- 
self that very night. The apostle accordingly went 
into the church, which suddenly became illuminated. 
The ceremony was performed in sumptuous style, 
accompanied by strains of heavenly music and 
clouds of fragrant incense. After this the apostle 
came into the boat, and ordered the fisherman to 
cast his net. He did so, and had a miraculous draught 
of fishes ; one of which he was commanded to present 
to the bishop, and to signify to him that the apostle 
had relieved him from the necessity of consecrating 
the church. 

Mellitus was a wary man, slow of belief, and 
required confirmation of the fisherman's tale. He 
opened the church doors and beheld wax candles, 
crosses, holy water, oil sprinkled in various places, 
and various other traces of a grand ceremonial. If 
he had still any lingering doubts, they were com- 
pletely removed on the fisherman's producing the 
identical fish which he had been ordered by the 
apostle to present to him. To resist this would 
have been to resist ocular demonstration. The good 
bishop was accordingly convinced that the church 
had actually been consecrated by St. Peter in person; 
Ocular demonstration, " Seeing's believing." 



THE CONQUEROR CROWNED 15 

so he reverently abstained from proceeding further 
in the business. 

The foregoing tradition is said to be the reason 
why King Edward the Confessor chose this place 
as the site of a religious house which he meant to 
endow. He pulled down the old church, and built 
another in its place in 1045. In this his remains 
were deposited in a magnificent shrine. 

Washington Irving, The Sketch Book. 



WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR CROWNED 

Christmas Day, 1066. — "Two nations were indeed 
in the womb " of the Abbey on that day. Within 
the massive freshly-erected walls was the Saxon 
populace of London, intermixed with the retainers 
of the Norman camp and court. Outside sat the 
Norman soldiers on their war-horses, eagerly watching 
for any disturbance in the interior. The royal work- 
men had been sent into London a few days before, 
to construct the mighty fortress of the Tower, which 
henceforth was to overawe the city. Before the high 
altar, standing on the very gravestone of Edward, 
was the fierce, huge, unwieldy William, the exact 
contrast of the sensitive, transparent king who lay 
beneath his feet. On either side stood an Anglo- 
Saxon and a Norman prelate. The Norman was 
Godfrey, Bishop of Coustances; the Saxon was 
Aired, Archbishop of York, holding in his own 
hand the golden crown, of Byzantine workmanship, 



16 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

wrought by Guy of Amiens. Stigand of Canterbun/, 
the natural depository of the rite of coronation, had 
fled to Scotland. Aired, with that worldly prudence 
which characterised his career, was there, making the 
most of the new opportunity, and thus established 
over William an influence which no other ecclesiastic 
of the time, not even Hildebrand, was able to gain. 

The moment arrived for the ancient form of 
popular election. The Norman prelate was to ad- 
dress in French those who could not speak English; 
the Saxon primate was to address in English those 
who could not speak French. A confused acclama- 
tion arose from the mixed multitude. The Norman 
cavalry without, hearing but not understanding 
this peculiarity of the Saxon institution, took alarm, 
and set fire to the gates of the Abbey, and perhaps 
the thatched dwellings which surrounded it. The 
crowd — nobles and poor men and women — alarmed 
in their turn, rushed out. The prelates and monks 
were left alone with William in the church, and in 
the solitude of that wintry day, amidst the cries 
of his new subjects, trampled down by the horses' 
hoofs of their conquerors, he himself, for the first 
time in his life, trembling from head to foot, the 
remainder of the ceremony was hurried on. Aired, 
in the name of the Saxons, exacted from him the 
oath to protect them before he would put the crown 
on his head. And thus ended the first undoubted 
Westminster coronation. 

Stanley, Westminster Abbey. 

Prelate. Bishop. Primate. Archbishop. 



ELEANOR'S MEMORIAL 17 

RIVER-SPORTS IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY 

At Easter, the diversion of river-tilting is prose- 
cuted on the water; a target is strongly fastened to 
a trunk or mast, fixed in the middle of the river, 
and a youngster standing upright in the stern of a 
boat, made to move as fast as the oars and current 
can carry it, is to strike the target with his lance; 
and if in hitting it he break his lance, and keep his 
place in the boat, he gains his point, and triumphs; 
but if it happens that the lance be not shivered by 
the force of the blow, he is of course tumbled into 
the water, and away goes his vessel without him. 
However, a couple of boats full of young men are 
placed, one on each side of the target, so as to be 
ready to take up the unsuccessful adventurer, the 
moment he emerges from the stream and comes 
fairly to the surface. The bridge and the balconies 
on the banks are filled with spectators whose business 
it is to laugh. 

Fitzstephen, Sports and Pastimes of the 
Twelfth Century. 



QUEEN ELEANOR'S MEMORIAL AT 
CHARING CROSS 

Hard by Whitehall, near the Mews (so called because 
it was formerly a place for keeping of hawks, but is 
now a beautiful stable for the King's horses), there 
stood a monument, which King Edward the First 



18 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

erected in memory of Queen Eleanor, the dearest 
husband to the most loving wife, whose tender 
affection will stand upon record, and be an example, 
to all posterity. She was the daughter of Ferdinand 
the Third, King of Castile; and married to Edward 
the First, King of England, with whom she went 
to the Holy Land. When her husband was treacher- 
ously wounded by a Moor with a poisoned sword, 
and rather grew worse than received any ease by 
what the physicians applied, she found a remedy, as 
new and unheard-of, as full of love and endearment. 
For by reason of the malignity of the poison her 
husband's wounds could not possibly be closed ; but 
she licked them daily with her own tongue, and 
sucked out the venomous humour: to her a most 
delicious liquor. By the power whereof, or rather 
by the virtue of the tenderness of a wife, she so 
drew out the poisonous matter that he was entirely 
cured of his wound, and she escaped without catching 
any harm. What then can be more rare than this 
lady's expressions of love? or what can be more 
admirable? The tongue of a wife, anointed (if I 
may so say) with duty and love to her husband, 
draws from her beloved those poisons which could 
not be drawn out by the most approved physician; 
and what many and most exquisite medicines could 
not do, it effected purely by the love of a wife. 

Camden, Britannia. 

Note. — Before his accession to the throne Edward I. was 
with the Crusade, 1270-72. It was during this period that 
the above incident is said to have occurred. About seventeen 



TYLER REBELLION 19 

years later Queen Eleanor died at Hardeby, Lincolnshire, 
and each spot where her body rested on its last journey to 
London became the site of a cross erected in her memory. 
Charing Cross was the last of these memorials. 



THE TYLER REBELLION, 1381 

But I will first go on with this rebellion in England. 
When those who had lodged at Rochester had done 
all they wanted, they departed, and, crossing the 
river, came to Dartford, but always following their 
plan of destroying the houses of lawyers or proctors 
on the right and left of their road. In their way 
they cut off several men's heads, and continued their 
march to Blackheath, where they pitched their 
quarters; they said they were armed for the king 
and commons of England. When the citizens of 
London found the}' were quartered so near them, 
they closed the gates of London Bridge; guards 
were placed there by orders of Sir William Walworth, 
Mayor of London, and several rich citizens who were 
not of their party; but there were in the city more 
than thirty thousand who favoured them. 

Those who were at Blackheath had information 
of this; they sent, therefore, their knight to speak 
with the king, and to tell him, what they were doing 
was for his service, for the kingdom had been for 
several years wretchedly governed, and to the great 
dishonour of the realm and the oppression of the 
lower ranks of the people, by his uncles, by the clergy, 
and in particular by the Archbishop of Canterbury, 



20 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

his Chancellor, from whom they would have an 
account of his ministry. The knight dared not say 
nor do anything to the contrary, but, advancing 
to the Thames opposite the Tower, he took boat 
and crossed over. 

While the king and those with him in the Tower 
were in great suspense, and anxious to receive some 
intelligence, the knight came on shore; way was 
made for him, and he was conducted to the king, 
who was in an apartment with the princess his 
mother. There were also with the king his two 
maternal brothers, the Earl of Kent and Sir John 
Holland, the Earls of Salisbury, Warwick, Suffolk, 
the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Great Prior of 
the Templars in England, Sir Robert de Namur, 
the Lord de Vertain, the Lord de Gommegines, Sir 
Henry de Sausselles, the Mayor of London and 
several of the principal citizens. 

Sir John Newtoun, who was well known to them 
all, for he was one of the king's officers, cast himself 
on his knees and said: " My much redoubted lord, 
do not be displeased with me for the message I am 
about to deliver to you; for, my dear lord, through 
force I am come hither." 

" Ify no means, Sir John; tell us what you are 
charged with; we hold you excused." 

" My very redoubted lord, the commons of your 
realm sent me to you to entreat you would come 
and speak with them on Blackheath. They wish 
to have no one but yourself; and you need not 
fear for your person, for they will not do you the 



TYLER REBELLION 21 

least harm; they always have respected and will 
respect you as their king; but they will tell you 
many things which, they say, it is necessary you 
should hear; with which, however, they have not 
empowered me to acquaint you. But, dear lord, 
have the goodness to give me such an answer as may 
satisfy them, and that they may be convinced I 
have really been in your presence; for they have 
my children as hostages for my return, whom they 
will assuredly put to death, if I do not go back." 

The king replied, " You shall speedily have an 
answer." 

Upon this, he called a council to consider what 
was to be done. The king was obliged to say, that if 
on Thursday they would come down to the river 
Thames, he would without fail speak to them. Sir 
John Newtoun, on receiving this answer, was well 
satisfied therewith, and, taking leave of the king 
and barons, departed; having entered his boat, he 
recrossed the Thames, and returned to Blackheath, 
where he had left upwards of sixty thousand men. 
He told them from the king that if they would send 
on the morrow morning their leaders to the Thames, 
the king would come and hear what they had to say. 
This answer gave great pleasure, and they were 
contented with it ; they passed the night as well as 
they could; but you must know that one-fourth of 
them fasted for want of provision, as they had not 
brought any with them, at which they were much 
vexed, as may be supposed. 

On Corpus Christi day King Richard heard mass, 



22 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

in the Tower of London, with all his lords, and after- 
wards entered his barge, attended by the Earls of 
Salisbury, Warwick and Suffolk, with other knights. 
He rowed down the Thames towards Rotherhithe, 
a manor belonging to the crown, where were upwards 
of ten thousand men, who had come from Black- 
heath to see the king and to speak to him; when 
they perceived his barge approach, they set up such 
shouts and cries as if all the devils in hell had been 
in their company. They had their knight, Sir John 
Newtoun, with them; for, in case the king had not 
come and they found he had made a jest of them, 
they would, as they had threatened, have cut him 
to pieces. 

When the king and his lords saw this crowd of 
people, and the wildness of their manner, there was 
not one among them so bold and determined but 
felt alarmed; the king was advised by his barons 
not to land, but to have his barge rowed up and 
down the river. 

"What do ye wish for?" demanded the king; 
" I am come hither to hear what you have to say." 

Those near him cried out with one voice: " We 
wish thee to land, when we will remonstrate with 
thee, and tell thee more at our ease what our wants 
are." 

The Earl of Salisbury then replied for the king, 
and said: " Gentlemen, you are not properly dressed, 
nor in a fit condition for the king to talk with you." 

Nothing more was said; for the king was desired 
to return to the Tower of London from whence he 



TYLER REBELLION 23 

had set out. When the people saw that they could 
obtain nothing more, they were inflamed with 
passion, and went back to Blackheath, where the 
main body was, to relate the answer they had re- 
ceived, and how the king was returned to the Tower. 
They all then cried out, " Let us march instantly 
to London." 

They immediately set off, and, in their road 
thither, they destroyed the houses of lawyers, 
courtiers, and monasteries. Advancing into the 
suburbs of, London, which were very handsome and 
extensive, they pulled down many fine houses; in 
particular, they demolished the prison of the king 
called the Marshalsea, and set at liberty all those 
confined within it. They did much damage to the 
suburbs, and menaced the Londoners at the entrance 
of the bridge for having shut the gates of it, saying, 
they would set fire to the suburbs, take the city by 
storm, and afterwards burn and destroy it. 

With respect to the common people of London, 
numbers were of their opinions, and, on assembling 
together, said: "Why will you refuse admittance 
to these honest men ? They are our friends, and what 
they are doing is for our good." It was then found 
necessary to open the gates, when crowds rushed 
in, and ran to those shops which seemed well stored 
with provisions; if they sought for meat or drink, 
it was placed before them, and nothing refused, but 
all manner of good cheer offered, in hopes of ap- 
peasing them. 

Their leaders, John Ball, Jack Straw and Wat 



24 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

Tyler, then marched through London, attended 
by more than twenty thousand men, to the palace 
of the Savoy, which is a handsome building on the 
road to Westminster, situated on the banks of the 
Thames, belonging to the Duke of Lancaster; they 
immediately killed the porters, pressed into the house 
and set it on fire. Not content with committing 
this outrage, they went to the house of the knights- 
hospitallers of Rhodes, dedicated to St. John of 
Mount Carmel, which they burnt, together with 
their hospital and church. 

They afterwards paraded the streets, and killed 
every Fleming they could find, whether in house, 
church or hospital; not one escaped death. They 
broke open several houses of the Lombards, taking 
whatever money they could lay their hands on, 
none daring to oppose them. They murdered a rich 
citizen called Richard Lyon, to whom Wat Tyler 
had been formerly servant in France; but, having 
once beaten this varlet, he had not forgotten it, 
and, having carried his men to his house, ordered 
his head to be cut off, placed upon a pike, and carried 
through the streets of London. Thus did these 
wicked people act like madmen ; and, on this Thurs- 
day, they did much mischief to the City of London. 

Froissart, Chronicles. 

Varlet. A common fellow. 



CHIVALRY ON LONDON BRIDCxE 25 



CHIVALRY ON LONDON BRIDGE 

In 1390 the famous passage of arms (was) waged 
on St. George's Day, amid all the pomp of heraldry, 
between the Scottish knight Sir David Lindsay, 
Earl of Crawford, and the English Lord Wells, who, 
being King Richard's ambassador in Scotland, and 
attending at a solemn banquet there, where " Scot- 
tishmen and Englishmen were communing of deeds 
of arms," proposed to settle the controversy as to 
the comparative valour of the two nations by a 
single combat between Lindsay and himself. 

" As soon as the day of battle was come," says 
Stow, following the animated narrative of Hector 
Boecius, " both the parties were conveyed to the 
bridge, and soon after, by sound of trumpet, the two 
parties ran hastily together, on their barbed horses, 
with square grounden spears, to the death. Earl 
David, notwithstanding the valiant dint of spears 
broken on his helmet and visage, sate so strongly, 
that the people, moved with vain suspicion, cried, 
' Earl David, contrary to the law of arms, is bound 
to the saddle.' Earl David, hearing this murmur, 
dismounted off his horse, and without any support 
or help ascended again into the saddle. Incontinent 
they rushed together with the new spears the second 
time, with burning ire to conquer honour; but in 
the third course the Lord Wells, was sent out of his 
saddle with such a violence that he fell to the ground. 
Barbed horses. Armed with barbs or spikes. 



26 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

Earl David, seeing his fall, dismounted hastily from 
his horse, and tenderly embraced him, that the 
people might understand he fought with no hatred, 
but only for the glory of victory, and, in the sign of 
more humanity, he visited him every day while he 
recovered his health, and then returned into Scot- 
land : " an incident combining all the finest points 
in the brilliant morality of chivalry. 

Knight, London. 



THE GUILDHALL 

On the north side of the street (Cheap, or Cheap 
Street) is the Guildhall, wherein the courts for the 
city be kept, namely, i. The court of common 
council; 2. The court of the lord mayor and his 
brethren the aldermen; 3. The court of hustings; 
4. The court of orphans ; 5. The court of the sheriffs ; 
6. The court of the wardmote ; 7. The court of 
the hallmote ; 8. The court of requests, commonly 
called the court of conscience; 9. The chamberlain's 
court for apprentices, and making them free. 

This Guildhall, saith Robert Fabian, was begun 
to be built new in the year 141 1, the 12th of Henry 
IV., by Thomas Knoles, then mayor, and his brethren 
the aldermen ; the same was made of a little cottage 
a large and great house, as now it standeth, towards 

Hustings. A city court. 

Wardmote, Hallmote. A mote was an assembly in which 
the affairs of the locality or country were debated and 
settled. Cf. moot-hall, moot-point, Witenagemot. 



THE GUILDHALL 27 

the charges whereof the companies gave large bene- 
volences; also offences of men were pardoned for 
sums of money towards this work, extraordinary 
fees were raised, fines, amercements, and other 
things employed during seven years, with a con- 
tinuation thereof of three years more, all to be 
employed to this building. 

The 1st year of Henry VI., John Coventry and 
John Carpenter, executors to Richard Whittington, 
gave towards the paving of this great hall twenty 
pounds, and the next year fifteen pounds more to 
the said pavement with hard stone of Purbeck. They 
also glazed some windows thereof, and of the mayor's 
court; on every which window the arms of Richard 
Whittington are placed. The foundation of the 
mayor's court was laid in the 3rd year of the reign 
of Henry VI., and of the porch on the south side of 
the mayor's court, in the 4th of the said king. 

Then was built the mayor's chamber, and the 
council chamber, with other rooms above the stairs. 
Last of all a stately porch entering the great hall 
was erected, the front thereof towards the south 
being beautified with images of stone, such as is 
showed by these verses following, made about some 
thirty years since by William Elderton, at that 
time an attorney in the sheriffs' courts there: 

Though most of the images be pulled down, 
And none be thought remayne in towne, 
I am sure there be in London yet, 
Seven images in such and in such a place; 

Amercement. Punishment. 



28 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

And few or none I think will hit, 

Yet every day they show their face, 

And thousands see them every year, 

But few I think can tell me where, 

Where Jesu Christ aloft doth stand ; 

Law and Learning on eyther hand, 

Discipline in the Devil's neck, ' 

And hard by her are three direct, 

There Justice, Fortitude; and Temperance stand, 

Where find ye the like in all this land ? 

Divers aldermen glazed the great hall and other 
courts, as appeareth by their arms in each window. 
William Hariot, draper, mayor 1481, gave forty 
pounds to the making of two louvers in the said 
Guildhall, and towards the glazing thereof. The 
kitchens and other houses of office adjoining to this 
Guildhall were built of later time, to wit, about the 
year 1501, by procurement of Sir John Sha, gold- 
smith, mayor, who was the first that kept his feast 
there ; towards the charges of which work the mayor 
had of the fellowships of the city by their own 
agreement certain sums of money, as of the Mercers 
forty pounds, the Grocers twenty pounds, the 
Drapers thirty pounds, and so of the other fellow- 
ships through the city, as they were of power. Also 
widows and other well-disposed persons gave certain 
sums of money, as the Lady Hill ten pounds, the 
Lady Austrie ten pounds, and so of many other, 
till the work was finished, since the which time the 
mayors' feasts have been yearly kept there, which 
before time had been kept in the Tailors' Hall, and 
in the Grocers' Hall. Nicholas Alwyn, grocer, mayor 

Louver, or louvre. A window. 



SIR RICHARD WHITTINGTON 29 

1499, deceased 1505, gave by his testament for a 
hanging of tapestry, to serve for principal days in the 
Guildhall, £y3 6s. 8d. How this gift was performed 
I have not heard, for executors of our time having 
no conscience (I speak of my own knowledge) prove 
more testaments than they perform. 

Stow, Survey of London. 



SIR RICHARD WHITTINGTON 

Towards the bottom of Highgate Hill, on the south 
side of the road, stands an upright stone, inscribed 
" Whittington's stone." This marks the situation 
of another stone on which Richard Whittington is 
traditionally said to have sat when having run away 
from his master, he rested to ruminate on his hard 
fate, and was urged to return back by a peal from 
Bow-bells, in the following distich: 

Turn again, Whittington, 
Thrice Lord Mayor of London. 

Certain it is that Whittington served the office of 
Lord Mayor three times, viz.: in 1398, 1406, and 
141 9. He also founded several public edifices and 
charitable institutions. Some idea of his wealth 
may be formed from the circumstance of his destroy- 
ing bonds which he held of the king (Henry V.) to 

Distich. Two lines. 



30 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

the amount of £60,000 sterling in a lire of cinnamon, 
cloves, and other spices which he had made, at an 
entertainment given to that monarch at Guildhall. 

Collet, Relics of Literature. 



PRINCE HAL AND JUDGE GASCOIGNE 

The most renowned prince, King Henry the Fifth, 
late King of England, during the life of his father 
was noted to be fierce and of wanton courage. It 
happened that one of his servants whom he well 
favoured, for felony by him committed, was ar- 
raigned at the King's Bench; whereof he being 
advertised, and incensed by light persons about him, 
in furious rage came hastily to the bar, where his 
servant stood as a prisoner, and commanded him 
to be ungyved, and set at liberty, whereat all men 
were abashed, reserved the chief justice, who humbly 
exhorted the prince to be contented that his servant 
might be ordered according to the ancient laws of 
this realm, or if he would have him saved from the 
rigour of the laws, that he should obtain, if he 
might, of the king, his father, his gracious pardon; 
whereby no law or justice should be derogated. 
With which answer the prince nothing appeased, 
but rather more inflamed, endeavoured himself to 
take away his servant. 
The judge considering the perilous example and 

Ungyve. Unfetter. 



PRINCE HAL AND THE JUDGE 31 

inconvenience that might thereby ensue, with a 
valiant spirit and courage commanded the prince 
upon his allegiance to leave the prisoner and depart 
his way. With which commandment the prince, 
being set all in a fury, all chafed, and in a terrible 
manner, came up to the place of judgment — men 
thinking that he would have slain the judge, or have 
done to him some damage; but the judge sitting 
still, without moving, declaring the majesty of the 
king's place of judgment, and with an assured and 
bold countenance said to the prince these words 
following : 

"Sir, remember yourself; I keep here- the place 
of the king, your sovereign lord and father, to whom 
you owe double obedience, wherefore oft-times in 
his name I charge you desist of your wilfulness and 
unlawful enterprise, and from henceforth give good 
example to those which hereafter shall be your 
proper subjects. And now for your contempt and 
disobedience, go you to the prison of the King's 
Bench, whereunto I commit you; and remain you 
there prisoner until the pleasure of the king, your 
father, be further known." 

With which words being abashed, and also won- 
dering at the marvellous gravity of that worshipful 
justice, the noble prince, laying his weapon apart, 
doing reverence, departed and went to the King's 
Bench as he was commanded. Whereat his servants 
disdaining, came and showed to the king all the 
whole affair. Whereat he awhile studying, after as 
a man all ravished with gladness, holding his eyes 



32 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

and hands up towards heaven, abrayded, saying, 
with a loud voice, " O merciful God, how much am 
I, above all other men, bound to your infinite good- 
ness; specially for that Ye have given me a judge, 
who feareth not to minister justice, and also a son 
who can suffer sensibly and obey justice." 

Elyot, The Govemour (1531). 



A FIFTEENTH-CENTURY PICTURE 

Through the gloomy arches of the Temple Gate 
and Lud, our horsemen wound their way, and finally 
arrived in safety at Marmaduke's hostelry in the 
East Chepe. . . . (Then he) bent his way to War- 
wick Lane, where the earl lodged. 

The narrow streets were, however, crowded with 
equestrians, whose dress eclipsed his own, some wend- 
ing their way to the Tower, some to the palaces 
of the Flete. Carriages there were none, and only 
twice he encountered the huge litters, in which 
some aged prelate or some high-born dame veiled 
greatness from the day. But the frequent vistas to 
the river gave glimpses of the gay boats and barges 
that crowded the Thames, which was then the 
principal thoroughfare for every class, but more 
especially the noble. The ways were fortunately 

Abrayd. To rouse, as from sleep. 
Equestrian. A rider on horseback. 
Litter. A chair for carrying passengers. 



FIFTEENTH-CENTURY PICTURE 33 

dry and clean for London; though occasionally 
deep holes and furrows in the road menaced perils 
to the unwary horseman. The streets themselves 
might well disappoint in splendour the stranger's 
eye; for although, viewed at a distance, ancient 
London was incalculably more picturesque and 
stately than the modern; yet when fairly in its 
tortuous labyrinths, it seemed to those who had 
improved the taste by travel, the meanest and the 
mirkiest capital of Christendom. 

The streets were marvellously narrow, the upper 
stories chiefly of wood, projecting far over the lower, 
which were formed of mud and plaster. The shops 
were pitiful booths, and the 'prentices standing at 
the entrance bare-headed and cap in hand, and 
lining the passages, as the old French writer avers, 
comme idoles, kept up an eternal din with their 
clamorous invitations, often varied by pert witti- 
cisms on some churlish passenger, or loud vitu- 
perations of each other. The whole ancient family 
of the London criers were in full bay. Scarcely had 
Marmaduke's ears recovered the shock of " Hot 
Peascods — all hot," than they were saluted with 
" Mackerel/' " Sheep's feet — hot sheep's feet." At 
the smaller taverns stood the inviting vociferators 
of " Cock-pie," " Ribs of beef — hot beef," while 
blended with these multitoned discords, whined 
the vielle or primitive hurdy-gurdy, screamed the 

Tortuous labyrinths. Jumble of winding streets. 
Comme idoles. Like images. 
Vituperation. A heated argument. 
Peascod. Literally, the skin of a pea. 
B 



34 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

pipe, twanged the harp, from every quarter where 
the thirsty paused to drink or the idler stood to 
gape. 

Lytton, The Last of the Barons. 



THE CADE REBELLION, 1450 

The rebels, which never soundly slept, for fear of 
sudden chances, hearing the bridge (London Bridge) 
to be kept and manned, ran with great haste to open 
the passage, where between both parts was a fierce 
and cruel encounter. Matthew Gough, more expert 
in martial feats than the other chieftains of the city, 
perceiving the Kentish men better to stand to their 
tackling than his imagination expected, advised his 
company no farther to proceed towards Southwark, 
till the day appeared ; to the extent that the citizens 
hearing where the place of the jeopardy rested, 
might occur their enemies and relieve their friends 
and companions. 

But this counsel came to small effect; for the 
multitude of the rebels drave the citizens from the 
piles at the bridge-foot, to the draw-bridge, and began 
to set fire to divers houses. Alas! what sorrow it 
was to behold that miserable chance; for some 
desiring to eschew the fire leapt on his enemy's 
weapon, and so died; fearful women, with children 
in their arms, amazed and appalled leapt into the 
river; others doubting how to save themselves 



CADE REBELLION 35 

between fire, water, and sword, were in their houses 
suffocated and smouldered ; yet the captains nothing 
regarding these chances, fought on this draw-bridge 
all the night valiantly, but in conclusion the rebels 
got the draw-bridge, and drowned many, and slew 
John Sutton, alderman, and Robert Haysand, a 
hard}* citizen, with many others, besides Matthew 
Gough, a man of great wit, much experienced in 
feats of chivalry, the which in continual wars had 
valiantly served the king, and his father, in the 
parts beyond the sea. But it is often seen that he 
which many times hath vanquished his enemies in 
strange countries, and returned again as a con- 
queror, hath of his own nation afterward been 
shamefully murdered and brought to confusion. 

This hard and sore conflict endured on the bridge 
till nine of the clock in the morning in doubtful 
chance and fortune's balance; for some time the 
Londoners were beaten back to the piles at St. 
Magnus's corner; and suddenly again the rebels 
were repulsed and driven back to the piles in South- 
wark, so that both parts being faint, weary, and 
fatigued, agreed to desist from fight, and to leave 
battle till the next day, upon condition that neither 
Londoners should pass into Southwark, nor the 
Kentish men into London. 

Edward Hall, Chronicle. 



36 LONDON IN LITERATURE 



RICHARD III. OF GLOUCESTER SEIZES 
THE CROWN (1483) 

Richard saw, therefore, that there were no longer 
any measures to be kept with Lord Hastings; and 
he determined to ruin the man whom he despaired 
of engaging in his usurpation. Accordingly he 
summoned a council in the Tower; whither Hastings, 
suspecting no design against him, repaired without 
hesitation. The Duke of Gloucester appeared in 
the easiest and most gracious humour imaginable. 
After some familiar conversation he left the council, 
as if called away by other business; but soon after 
returning with an angry and inflamed countenance, 
he demanded what punishment they deserved that 
had plotted against the life of one who was so nearly 
related to the king, and was intrusted with the 
administration of government? Hastings replied 
that they merited the punishment of traitors. 

" These traitors," cried the protector, " are the 
sorceress, my brother's wife, and Jane Shore, with 
others their associates. See to what a condition 
they have reduced me by their incantations and 
witchcraft " ; upon which he laid bare his arm, 
all shrivelled and decayed. 

The counsellors, who knew that this infirmity 
had attended him from his birth, looked on each 

Sorceress. A witch. 

Incantations. Magical words used by witches. 



GLOUCESTER SEIZES THE CROWN 37 

other with amazement. Lord Hastings, who, since 
Edward's death, had been engaged in an intrigue 
with Jane Shore, ventured to reply, " Certainly, 
my lord, if they have done so heinously, they deserve 
the most heinous punishment." 

" What! " exclaimed Richard, " dost thou bandy 
me with ifs and ans ? I aver they have done it ; and 
I will make it good on thy body, thou traitor." 

So saying, he struck the table with his fist. Armed 
men rushed in at the signal. Hastings was seized, 
and hurried away, and instantly beheaded on a 
timber log intended for repairs in the Tower. Lord 
Stanley, the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of Ely, 
and other counsellors, were committed to different 
chambers. To carry on the farce of his accusations.. 
Richard ordered the goods of Jane Shore to be 
seized; and he summoned her to answer before the 
council for sorcery and witchcraft. Eventually he 
directed her to be tried in the spiritual court; and 
she did penance in a white sheet in St. Paul's before 
the people. . . . 

At length Buckingham and the Lord Mayor pro- 
ceeded with a body of prelates, nobles, and commons 
to his residence at Baynard's Castle. He was assured 
that the nation was resolved to have him for their 
sovereign, and after some well-acted hesitation, he 
accepted the crown (June 26). 

The farce was soon after followed by the murder 
of the two young princes. Richard gave orders to 
Sir Richard Brackenbury, constable of the Tower, 
to put his nephews to death; but this gentleman, 



38 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

to his honour, refused such an infamous office. The 
tyrant then sent for Sir James Tyrrel, who promised 
obedience; and he ordered Brackenbury to resign 
to T}7rrel the keys and government of the Tower 
for one night. Choosing associates, Dighton and 
Forest, Tyrrel came in the night-time to the door 
of the chamber where the princes were lodged; and 
sending in the assassins, he bade them execute their 
commission, while he himself stayed without. They 
found the young princes in bed, and fallen into a 
profound sleep. After suffocating them with the 
bolster and pillows, they showed their naked bodies 
to Tyrrel, who ordered them to be buried at the 
foot of the stairs, deep in the ground, under a heap 
of stones. . . . 

The universal detestation of Richard's conduct 
after the death of the young princes turned the 
attention of the nation towards Henry (VII.). 

Hume, History of England. 

Note. — This Henry, after whom the famous Henry the 
Seventh Chapel in Westminster Abbey is called, joined, by 
marriage, the Houses of York and Lancaster, and so the 
disastrous Wars of the Roses ended. 



WOLSEY IN WHITEHALL 

Now will I declare unto you his order in going to 
Westminster Hall daily in the term season. First 
ere he came out of his privy chamber he heard most 
commonly every day two masses in his closet; and 



WOLSEY IN WHITEHALL 39 

as I heard one of his chaplains say, which was a 
man of credence and excellent learning, the cardinal, 
what business or weighty matter soever he had in 
the day, never went to bed with any part of his 
divine service unsaid, not so much as one collect; 
wherein I doubt not but he deceived the opinion of 
divers persons. 

Then going again to his privy chamber, he would 
demand of some of his said chamber, if his servants 
were in a readiness, and had furnished his chamber 
of presence, and waiting chamber. He being there- 
fore then advertised, came out of his privy chamber, 
about eight of the clock, apparelled all in red; that 
is to say, his upper garment was either of fine scarlet, 
or taffety, but most commonly of fine crimson satin 
engrained; his pillion of fine scarlet, with a neck 
set in the inner side with black velvet, and a tippet 
of sables about his neck; holding in his hands an 
orange, whereof the meat or substance within was 
taken out, and filled up again with the part of a 
sponge, wherein was vinegar and other confections 
against the pestilent airs; the which he most com- 
monly held to his nose when he came among any 
press, or else that he was pestered with any suitors. 
And before him was borne first the broad seal of 
England, and his cardinal's hat by a lord or some 
gentleman of worship, right solemnly. And as soon 
as he was entered into his chamber of presence, 
where there was daily attending upon him, as well 
noblemen of this realm, and other worthy gentlemen, 

Advertise. To inform. Pillion. A saddle-cushion. 



4 o LONDON IN LITERATURE 

as gentlemen of his own family, his two great crosses 
were there attending, to be borne before him. 

Then cried the gentlemen ushers, going before 
him, bareheaded, and said, " On before my lords 
and masters, on before; and make way for my lord 
cardinal." 

Thus went he down through the hall with a ser- 
geant of arms before him bearing a great mace of 
silver, and two gentlemen carrying of two great 
pillars of silver; and when he came to the hall door, 
then his mule stood trapped all in crimson velvet, 
with a saddle of the same, and gilt stirrups. Then 
was there attending upon him, when he was mounted, 
his two cross bearers, and his pillar bearers, in like 
case, upon great horses trapped all in fine scarlet. 

Then marched he forward, with all about him, 
bearing each of them a gilt pole-axe in their hands; 
and thus passed he forth until he came to West- 
minster Hall door. And there he alighted and went 
after this manner, up into the chancery, or into the 
star chamber; howbeit most commonly he would 
go into the chancery, and stay awhile at a bar, made 
for him, beneath the judges, and sometimes with 
other persons. And that done he would repair into 
the chancery, sitting there until an eleven of the 
clock, hearing of suits and determining of other 
matters. And from thence, he would divers times 
go into the star chamber, as occasion would serve. 
There he spared neither high nor low, but judged 
every estate according to his merits, and deserts. 
Cavendish, Life of Wolsey. 



DOWNFALL OF WOLSEY 41 

THE DOWNFALL OF CARDINAL WOLSEY 

KING HENRY VIII.— Act III. Scene II. 

Ante-chamber to the King's apartment. 

Wol. So farewell to the little good you bear me. 
Farewell ! a long farewell, to all my greatness ! 
This is the state of man : to-day he puts forth 
The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms, 
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him ; 
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, 
And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely 
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, 
And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured, 
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, 
This many summers in a sea of glory, 
But far beyond my depth : my high-blown pride 
At length broke under me, and now has left me, 
Weary and old with service, to the mercy 
Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me. 
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye: 
I feel my heart new open'd. O, how wretched 
Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours ! 
There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, 
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, 
More pangs and fears than wars or women 

have; 
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, 
Never to hope again. 



42 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

Enter Cromwell, and stands amazed. 

Why, how now, Cromwell ! 

Crom. I have no power to speak, sir. 

Wol. What! amazed 

At my misfortunes ? can thy spirit wonder 
A great man should decline ? Nay, an you weep, 
I am fall'n indeed. 

Crom. How does your grace ? 

Wol. Why, well; 

Never so truly happy, my good Cromwell. 
I know myself now ; and I feel within me 
A peace above all earthly dignities, 
A still and quiet conscience. The king has cured me, 
I humbly thank his grace; and from these shoul- 
ders, 
These ruin'd pillars, out of pity, taken 
A load would sink a navy, too much honour. 
O! 'tis a burden, Cromwell, 'tis a burden 
Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven ! 

Crom. I am glad your grace has made that right 
use of it. 

Wol. I hope I have: I am able now, methinks, 
Out of a fortitude of soul I feel, 
To endure more miseries and greater far 
Than my weak-hearted enemies dare offer. 
What news abroad? 

Crom. The heaviest and the worst 

Is your displeasure with the king. 

Wol. God bless him ! 

Crom. The next is, that Sir Thomas More is chosen 
Lord chancellor in your place. 



DOWNFALL OF WOLSEY 43 

Wol. That's somewhat sudden: 

But he's a learned man. May he continue 
Long in his highness' favour, and do justice 
For truth's sake and his conscience ; that his bones, 
When he has run his course and sleeps in blessings, 
May have a tomb of orphans' tears wept on 'em! 
What more? 

Crom. That Cranmer is return'd with welcome, 

Install' d lord archbishop of Canterbury. 

Wol. That's news indeed. 

Crom. Last, that the Lady Anne, 

Whom the king hath in secrecy long married, 
This day was view'd in open as his queen, 
Going to chapel; and the voice is now 
Only about her coronation. 

Wol. There was the weight that pull'd me down. 
O Cromwell ! 
The king has gone beyond me : all my glories 
In that one woman I have lost for ever : 
No sun shall ever usher forth mine honours, 
Or gild again the noble troops that waited 
Upon my smiles. Go, get thee from me, Cromwell; 
I am a poor fall'n man, unworthy now 
To be thy lord and master : seek the king ; 
That sun, I pray, may never set ! I have told him 
What and how true thou art : he will advance thee ; 
Some little memory of me will stir him — 
I know his noble nature — not to let 
Thy hopeful service perish too : good Cromwell, 
Neglect him not ; make use now, and provide 
For thine own future safety. 



44 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

Crom. O my lord ! 

Must I then leave you ? must I needs forgo 
So good, so noble, and so true a master? 
Bear witness, all that have not hearts of iron, 
With what a sorrow Cromwell leaves his lord. 
The king shall have my service, but my prayers 
For ever and for ever shall be yours. 

Wol. Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear 
In all my miseries ; but thou hast forced me, 
Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman. 
Let's dry our eyes : and thus far hear me, Cromwell ; 
And, when I am forgotten, as I shall be, 
And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention 
Of me more must be heard of, say, I taught thee; 
Say, Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory, 
And sounded all the depths and shoals of honour, 
Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in; 
A sure and safe one, though thy master miss'd it. 
Mark but my fall and that that ruin'd me. 
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition : 
By that sin fell the angels; how can man then, 
The image of his Maker, hope to win by it ? 
Love thyself last: cherish those hearts that hate 

thee; 
Corruption wins not more than honesty. 
Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, 
To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not. 
Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's, 
Thy God's, and truth's; then if thou fall'st, O 

Cromwell, 
Thou fall'st a blessed martyr! Serve the king; 



MORE'S FATE 45 

And prithee, lead me in : 

There take an inventory of all I have, 

To the last penny; 'tis the king's : my robe, 

And my integrity to heaven, is all 

I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell ! 

Had I but served my God with half the zeal 

I served my king, he would not in mine age 

Have left me naked to mine enemies. 
Cront. Good sir, have patience. 
Wol. So I have. Farewell 

The hopes of court ! my hopes in heaven do dwell. 

[Exeunt. 
Shakespeare. 



SIR THOMAS MORE'S FATE 

He was tried in Westminster Hall (for refusing to 
admit that Henry VIII. was the head of the Church 
of England), and, as he had fully expected, sentenced 
to death. He was taken back along the river to the 
Tower. 

On the wharf his loving Margaret (Mrs. Roper) 
was waiting for her last look. She broke through 
the guard of soldiers with bills and halberds, threw 
her arms round his neck, and kissed him, unable to 
say any word but, " O my father! O my father! " 

He blessed her, and told her that whatsoever she 
might suffer, it was not without the will of God, and 
she must therefore be patient. 

Bills and halberds. Soldiers' weapons. 



46 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

After having once parted with him she suddenly 
turned back again, ran to him, and clinging round 
his neck, kissed him over and over again — a sight 
at which the guards themselves wept. She never 
saw him again; but the night before his execution 
he wrote to her a letter with a piece of charcoal, with 
tender remembrances to all the family, and saying 
to her, " I never liked your manner better than 
when you kissed me last; for I am most pleased 
when daughterly love and dear charity have no 
leisure to look to earthly courtesy-" 

He likewise made it his special request that she 
might be permitted to be present at his burial. 

His hope was sure and steadfast, and his heart 
so firm that he did not even cease from humorous 
sayings. When he mounted the crazy ladder of the 
scaffold, he said: 

" Master Lieutenant, I pray you see me safe up; 
and for my coming down let me shift for myself." 
And he desired the executioner to give him time to 
put his beard out of the way of the stroke, " since 
that had never offended his Highness." 

His body was given to his family, and laid in the 
tomb he had already prepared in Chelsea Church; 
but the head was set upon a pole on London Bridge. 
The calm, sweet features were little changed, and 
the loving daughter gathered courage from it as 
she looked up at them. 

How she contrived the deed is not known, but 
before many days had passed the head was no longer 
there, and Mrs. Roper was said to have taken it 



ANN BOLEYN'S LAST LETTER 47 

away. She was sent for to the Council, and accused 
of the stealing of her father's head. She shrank not 
from avowing that thus it had been, and that the 
head was in her own possession. One story says 
that, as she was passing under the bridge in a boat, 
she looked up and said: 

"That head has often lain in my lap; I would 
that it would now fall into it." 

And at that moment it actually fell, and she 
received it. 

It is far more likely that she went by design, at 
the same time as some faithful friend on the bridge, 
who detached the precious head, and dropped it 
down to her in her boat beneath. . . . 

(She) was dismissed unhurt by the Council, and 
allowed to retain possession of her treasure. 

Charlotte M. Yonge, A Book of 
Golden Deeds. 



QUEEN ANN BOLEYN'S LAST LETTER 
TO KING HENRY VIII. (1536) 
Sir, 

Your Grace's displeasure, and my imprisonment, 
are things so strange unto me, as what to write, or 
what to excuse, I am altogether ignorant. Whereas 
you send unto me " willing me to confess a truth, 
and so obtain your favour " by such an one, whom 
you know to be mine ancient professed enemy, I 
no sooner receive this message by him, than I rightly 



48 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

conceived your meaning; and if, as you say, con- 
fessing a truth indeed ma}/ procure my safety, I 
shall with all willingness and duty perform your 
command. 

But let not your Grace ever imagine that your 
poor wife will ever be brought to acknowledge a 
fault, where not so much as a thought thereof pre- 
ceded. And, to speak a truth, never prince had wife 
more loyal in all duty, and in all true affection, 
than you have ever found in Ann Boleyn; with 
which name and place I could willingly have con- 
tented myself, if God and your Grace's pleasure 
had been so pleased. 

Neither did I at any time so far forget myself in 
my exaltation or received queenship, but that I 
always looked for such an alteration as I now find; 
for the ground of my preferment being on no surer 
foundation than your Grace's fancy, the least alter- 
ation I knew was fit and sufficient to draw that 
fancy to some other object. 

You have chosen me from a low estate to be your 
queen and companion, far beyond my desert or 
desire. If then you found me worthy of such honour, 
good your Grace, let not any light fancy, or bad 
counsel of mine enemies, withdraw your princely 
favour from me; neither let that stain, that un- 
worthy stain, of a disloyal heart towards your good 
Grace, ever cast so foul a blot on your most dutiful 
wife, and the infant princess your daughter. 

Try me, good King, but let me have a lawful 
trial, and let not my sworn enemies sit as my accusers 



ANN BOLEYN'S LAST LETTER 49 

and judges; yea, let me receive an open trial, for 
my truth shall fear no open shame; then shall you 
see either mine innocence cleared, your suspicion 
and conscience satisfied, the ignominy and slander 
of the world stopped, or my guilt openly declared. 
So that, whatsoever God or you may determine of 
me, your Grace may be freed from an open censure, 
and mine offence being so lawfully proved, your 
Grace is at liberty, both before God and man, not 
only to execute worthy punishment on me as an 
unlawful wife, but to follow your affection, already 
settled on that party for whose sake I am now as 
I am, whose name I could some good while since 
have pointed unto, your Grace being not ignorant 
of my suspicion therein. 

But if you have already determined of me, and 
that not only my death, but an infamous slander 
must bring you the enjoying of your desired happi- 
ness; then I desire of God, that he will pardon your 
great sin therein, and likewise mine enemies, the 
instruments thereof, and that he will not call you 
to a strict account for your unprincely and cruel 
usage of me, at his general judgment-seat, where 
both you and myself must shortly appear, and in 
whose judgment I doubt not (whatsoever the world 
may think of me) mine innocence shall be openly 
known, and sufficiently cleared. 

My last and only request shall be, that myself 
may only bear the burden of your Grace's displeasure, 
and that it may not touch the innocent souls of 
those poor gentlemen, who (as I understand) are 



50 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

likewise in strait imprisonment for my sake. If 
ever I have found favour in your sight, if ever the 
name of Ann Boleyn hath been pleasing in your 
ears, then let me obtain this request, and I will so 
leave to trouble your Grace any further with mine 
earnest prayers to the Trinity to have your Grace 
in his good keeping, and to direct you in all your 
actions. From my doleful prison in the Tower, 
this 6th of May. 



DEAN COLET OF ST. PAUL'S 

Colet seized the opportunity to commence the work 
of educational reform by the foundation of his own 
Grammar School, beside St. Paul's. The bent of 
its founder's mind was shown by the image of the 
Child Jesus over the master's chair, with the words, 
" Hear ye Him," graven beneath it. 

" Lift up your little white hands for me," wrote 
the Dean to his scholars, in words that show the 
tenderness which lay beneath the stern outer seeming 
of the man — " for me which prayeth for you to God." 

All the educational designs of the reformers were 
carried out in the new foundation. The old methods 
of instruction were superseded by fresh grammars 
composed by Erasmus and other scholars for its 
use. Lilly, an Oxford student who had studied Greek 
in the East, was placed at its head. The injunctions 
of the founder aimed at the union of rational religion 
with sound learning, at the exclusion of the scholastic 



DEAN COLET 51 

logic, and at the steady diffusion of the two classical 
literatures. 

The more bigoted of the clergy were quick to 
take alarm. '■' No wonder," More wrote to the Dean, 
" your school raises a storm, for it is like the wooden 
horse in which armed Greeks were hidden for the 
ruin of barbarous Troy." • 

But the cry of alarm passed helplessly away. Not 
only did the study of Greek creep gradually into 
the schools which existed, but the example of Colet 
was followed by a crowd of imitators. More grammar 
schools, it has been said, were founded in the latter 
years of Henry than in the three centuries before. 
The impulse grew happily stronger as the direct 
influence of the New Learning passed away. The 
grammar schools of Edward the Sixth and of Eliza- 
beth, in a word the system of middle-class education 
which by the close of the century had changed the 
very face of England, were the direct results of 
Colet's foundation of St. Paul's. . . . 

As Colet had been the first to attempt the reform 
of English education, so he was the first to under- 
take the reform of the Church. Warham still flung 
around the movement his steady protection, and it 
was by his commission that Colet was enabled to 
address the Convocation of the Clergy in words 
which set before them with unsparing severity the 
religious ideal of the New Learning. 

" Would that for once," burst forth the fiery 
preacher, " you would remember your name and 
profession and take thought for the reformation of 



52 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

the Church ! Never was it more necessary, and never 
did the state of the Church need more vigorous 
endeavours." " We are troubled with heretics," 
he went on, " but no heresy of theirs is so fatal to 
us and to the people at large as the vicious and de- 
praved lives of the clergy. That is the worst heresy 
of all." 

It was the reform of the bishops that must precede 
that of the clergy, the reform of the clergy that would 
lead to a general revival of religion in the people at 
large. The accumulation of benefices, the luxury 
and worldliness of the priesthood, must be aban- 
doned. The prelates ought to be busy preachers, to 
forsake the Court and labour in their own dioceses. 
Care should be taken for the ordination and pro- 
motion of worthier ministers, residence 'should be 
enforced, the low standard of clerical morality should 
be raised. It is plain that Colet looked forward, 
not to a reform of doctrine, but to a reform of life, 
not to a revolution which should sweep awa3' the 
older superstitions which he despised, but to a 
regeneration of spiritual feeling before which they 
would inevitably vanish. 

He was at once charged, however, with heresy, 
but Warham repelled the charge with disdain. 
Henry himself, to whom Colet had been denounced, 
bade him go boldly on. 

" Let every man have his own doctor," said the 
young King after a long interview, " and let every man 
favour his own, but this man is the doctor for me." 

Green, Short History. 



WELCOME TO QUEEN ELIZABETH 53 

THE CITY'S WELCOME TO QUEEN 
ELIZABETH (1558) 

On the four - and - twentieth of November, Queen 
Elizabeth set forward from the Tower to pass through 
the City to Westminster; but considering that 
after so long restraint she was now exalted from 
misery to majesty, from a prisoner to a princess, 
before she would suffer herself to be mounted in 
her chariot, she very devoutly lifted up her hands 
and eyes to heaven, uttering these words : 

" O Lord Almighty and ever-living God, I give 
Thee most humble and hearty thanks that Thou 
hast been so merciful unto me as to spare me to see 
this joyful and blessed day. And I acknowledge 
that Thou hast dealt as graciously and wonderfully 
with me as thou didst with Thy true and faithful 
servant, Daniel, Thy prophet, whom Thou deliveredst 
out of the lions' den from the cruelty of the greedy 
and raging lions; even so was I overwhelmed, and 
by Thee delivered. To Thee therefore only be thanks 
and honour and praise for evermore! Amen." 

Having made an end of her thanksgiving to God 
she put onwards through the City, where divers 
magnificent pageants presented themselves to her 
view. The throng of people was extraordinary, their 
acclamations loud as thunder; many were the ex- 
pressions of love tendered unto her, and by her as 
gratefully entertained as they were lovingly presented. 

To make a particular relation of the several occur- 



54 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

rences in that one day's entertainment would require 
above a day's expression. I will only point at some 
more remarkable passages wherein she showed 
herself extraordinarily affected to her people. 

She would many times cause her chariot to stand 
that the people might have their full sight of her. 
Amongst the several speeches that were addressed 
unto her from the pageants, if at any time any word 
did reflect upon her, a change of countenance was 
observed in her, but a settled constancy to hear it out, 
then her love and courtesy in giving the people thanks. 

In Cornhill a pageant presented itself, called 
The Seat of Worthy Government, intimating their 
dutiful allegiance to her, with the general conceived 
hopes of her princely government. The speech was 
no sooner delivered but she immediately answered: 

" I have taken notice of your good meaning towards 
me, and will endeavour to answer your several 
expectations." 

Passing forward another pageant appeared, repre- 
senting the eight Beatitudes; every one applied to 
her in particular by the speaker, the multitude 
crying out, " Amen, amen." 

Being come to the little conduit in Cheap she 
perceived an offer of love, and demanded what it 
might signify. One told her Grace that there was 
placed Time. "Time!" said she, "and Time I 
praise my God hath brought me hither. But what 
is that other with the book?" She was resolved 
that it was Truth the daughter of Time, presenting 

Conduit. A fountain. 



WELCOME TO QUEEN ELIZABETH 55 

the Bible in English. Whereupon she answered: 
" I thank the City for this gift above all the rest; 
it is a book which I will often and often read over." 

Then she commanded Sir John Perrot, one of the 
knights that held up the canopy, to go and receive 
the Bible. But being informed that it was to be let 
down unto her by a silken string she commanded 
him to stay. In the interim a purse of gold was 
presented by the Recorder in the behalf of the City,, 
which she received with her own hands, and after- 
ward gave attention to a speech delivered, making 
reply in the conclusion: 

" I thank my Lord Mayor, his brethren the Alder- 
men, and all of you, and whereas your request is 
that I should continue your good lady and queen, 
be you assured that I will be as good unto you as 
ever queen was yet unto her people. No will in me 
is wanting, neither (I hope) can there want any 
power. As for the privileges and charters of your 
City, I will in discharge of my oath and affection see 
them safely and exactly maintained. And persuade 
yourselves that for the safety and quietness of you 
all I will not spare, if need be, to spend my blood 
in your behalf. God bless you all, good people! "... 

As she went through Temple Bar, the ordnance 
and chambers of the Tower went off, the report 
whereof gave much content. Thus passed she along 
to Westminster, royally attended by the nobility 
of the kingdom, and was there crowned to the joy 
of all true-hearted Christians. 

Thom: Heywood, England's Elizabeth (1632). 



56 LONDON IN LITERATURE 



PARLIAMENT IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 

The speaker sitteth in a chair erected somewhat 
higher than the rest that he may see and be seen 
of all men; and before him on a lower seat sitteth 
his clerk, who readeth such bills as be first pro- 
pounded in the lower house, or sent down from the 
lords; for in that point each house hath equal 
authority to propound what they think meet, either 
for abrogation of old or making of new laws. 

All bills be thrice, and on divers days, read and 
disputed upon before they come to the question, 
which is, whether they shall be enacted or not; 
and in the discourse upon them very good order is 
used in the lower house, wherein he that will speak 
giveth notice thereof by standing up bare-headed. 
If many stand up at once, as now and then it hap- 
peneth, he speaketh first that was first seen to move 
out of his place, and telleth his tale unto the speaker, 
without rehearsal of his name whose speeches he 
meaneth to confute, so that with a perpetual oration, 
and not with altercation, these discourses are con- 
tinued. But as the party confuted may not reply 
upon that day, so one man cannot speak twice to 
one bill in one day, though he would change his 
opinion; but on the next day he may speak again, 
and yet but once as before. 

No vile, seditious, unreverent or biting words are 

Abrogation. Disuse. 



PARLIAMENT 57 

used in this assembly, yet if any happen to escape 
and be uttered the party is punished according to 
the censure of the assembly and custom in that 
behalf. 

In the afternoon they sit not except some urgent 
occasion; neither hath the speaker any voice in 
that house, wherewith to move or dissuade the 
furtherance or stay of any bill, but his office is, upon 
the reading thereof, briefly to declare the contents. 

If any bill pass, which cometh unto them from 
the lords, it is thus subscribed, Les commons ont 
assentus; so if the lords agree unto any bill sent 
unto them from the commons it is subscribed after 
this manner, Les seigniours ont assentus. If it be 
not agreed on after thrice reading there is conference 
required and had between the upper and nether 
houses, by certain appointed for that purpose, upon 
the points in question; whereupon, if no final agree- 
ment by the more part can be obtained, the bill 
is dashed and rejected, or, as the saying is, clean 
cast out of the doors. 

None of the nether house can give his voice by 
proxy, but in his own person; and after the bill 
twice read, then ingrossed, and the third time read 
again and discoursed upon, the speaker asketh if 
they will go to the question; whereunto if they 
agree, he holdeth up the bill and saith: " So many 
as will have this bill go forward say, Yea." Here- 
upon so many as allow of the thing cry " Yea! " — 

Les commons, Les seigniours, etc. The Commons, The Lords 
agree. 



58 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

the other " No! " and as the cry is more or less on 
either side so is the bill to stay or else go forward. 

If the number of negative and affirmative voices 
seem to be equal, so many as allow of the bill go 
down withal; the rest sit still, and being told by the 
poll, the greater part do carry away the matter. If 
something be allowed and in some part rejected 
the bill is put to certain committees to be amended, 
and then being brought in again it is read, and passeth 
or stayeth, as the voices yield thereto. 

This is the order of the passage of our laws, which 
are not ratified till both houses have agreed unto 
them, and yet not holden for law till the prince 
hath given his assent. 

Harrison, Description of England, in 
Holinshed's Chronicle (1577). 



THE THAMES IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 

What should I speak of the fat and sweet salmon, 
and that in such plenty (after the time of the 
smelt be passed) as no river in Europe is able to 
exceed it. What store also of barbel, trout, chevin, 
perch, smelt, bream, roach, dace, gudgeon, flounder, 
shrimps, etc., are commonly to be had therein, I 
refer to them that know by experience better than I, 
by reason of their daily trade of fishing in the same. 
And albeit it seemeth from time to time to be as it 
were defrauded in sundry wise of these large com- 
Chevin, or chub. A small freshwater fish. 



THAMES, SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 59 

raodities by the insatiable avarice of the fishermen, 
yet this famous river complaineth commonly of no 
want; but the more it loseth at one time the more 
it yieldeth at another. Only in carp it seemeth to be 
scant, since it is not long since that kind of fish was 
brought over to England, and but of late to speak of 
into this stream, by the violent rage of sundry land- 
floods that brake open the heads and dams of divers 
gentlemen's ponds, by which means it became some- 
what partaker also of this said commodity; whereof 
once it had no portion that I could ever hear (of). 
Oh! that this river might be spared but even one 
year from nets, etc., but alas! then should many 
a poor man be undone. . . . 

In like manner I could intreat of the infinite 
number of swans daily to be seen upon this river, 
the two thousand wherries and small boats whereby 
three thousand poor watermen are maintained, 
through the carriage and recarriage of such persons 
as pass or repass from time to time upon the same; 
besides those huge tide-boats, tilt-boats, and barges, 
which either carry passengers, or bring necessary 
provisions from all quarters of Oxfordshire, Berk- 
shire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Hertford- 
shire, Middlesex, Essex and Kent, unto the city of 
London. 

Ibid. 



6o LONDON IN LITERATURE 



LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY 
AT COURT 

Not long after this (1600), curiosity, rather than 
ambition, brought me to court; and, as it was the 
manner of those times for all men to kneel down 
before the great Queen Elizabeth, who then reigned, 
I was likewise upon my knees in the presence chamber, 
when she passed by to the chapel at Whitehall. As 
soon as she saw me she stopped, and swearing her 
usual oath, demanded, M Who is this? " Everybody 
then present looked upon me, but no man knew me, 
until Sir James Croft, a pensioner, finding the queen 
stayed, returned back and told who I was, and that 
I had married Sir William Herbert of St. Gillian's 
daughter. The queen hereupon looked attentively 
upon me, and swearing again her ordinary oath, said, 
" It is a pity he was married so young " ; and there- 
upon gave her hand to kiss twice, both times gently 
clapping me on the cheek. . . . 

Shortly after (the accession of James I.) 1 was 
made Knight of the Bath with the usual ceremonies 
belonging to that ancient order. I could tell how 
much my person was commended by the lords and 
ladies that came to see the solemnity then used, but 
I shall flatter myself too much if I believed it. 

I must not forget yet the ancient custom, being 
that some principal person was to put on the right 
spur of those the king had appointed to receive 
that dignity; the Earl of Shrewsbury seeing my 



HERBERT OF CHERBURY 61 

esquire there with my spur in his hand, voluntarily 
came to me and said, " Cousin, I believe you will be 
a good knight, and therefore I will put on your 
spur"; whereupon after my most humble thanks 
for so great a favour, I held up my leg against the 
wall, and he put on my spur. 

There is another custom likewise, that the knights 
the first day wear the gown of some religious order, 
and the night following to be bathed; after which 
they take an oath never to sit in a place where injus- 
tice should be done, but they shall right it to the 
uttermost of their power ; and particularly ladies and 
gentlewomen that shall be wronged in their honour, 
if they demand assistance, and many other points, 
not unlike the romances of knight errantry. 

The second day to wear robes of crimson taffety 
(in which habit I am painted in my study), and so to 
ride from St. James's to Whitehall, with our esquires 
before us; and the third day to wear a gown of 
purple satin, upon the left sleeve whereof is fastened 
certain strings weaved of white silk and gold tied in 
a knot, and tassels to it of the same, which all the 
knights are obliged to wear until they have done 
something famous in arms, or until some lady of 
honour take it off, and fasten it on her sleeve, saying, 
" I will answer he shall prove a good knight." I 
had not long worn this string, but a principal lady 
of the court, and certainly, in most men's opinion, 
the handsomest, took mine off, and said she would 
pledge her honour for mine. 

Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Autobiography. 



62 LONDON IN LITERATURE 



THE " BLUE RING " INCIDENT 

On the 14th of January (1603), the queen (Elizabeth) 
having sickened two days before of a cold, and being 
forewarned by Dee, who retained his mysterious 
influence over her mind to the last, to beware of 
Whitehall, removed to Richmond, which she said, 

was the warm winter-box to shelter her old age." . . . 

It is melancholy to add, that there is every reason 
to believe, that, while death was thus dealing with 
the aged queen, this very Carey and his sister, Lady 
Scroope, were intently watching the ebbing tide of 
life for the purpose of being the first to hail the 
impatient King of Scots as her successor. 

The spirit of the mighty Elizabeth, after all, passed 
away so quietly, that the vigilance of the self-inter- 
ested spies, by whom she was surrounded, was 
baffled, and no one knew the moment of her de- 
parture. Exhausted by her devotions, she had, after 
the archbishop left her, sunk into a deep sleep, from 
which she never awoke; and, about three in the 
morning, it was discovered that she had ceased to 
breathe. 

Lady Scroope gave the first intelligence of this 
fact, by silently dropping a sapphire ring to her 
brother, who was lurking beneath the windows of 
the chamber of death at Richmond Palace. This 
ring, long after known in court tradition as the 
" blue ring," had been confided to Lady Scroope by 
James, as a certain signal which was to announce 



THE STRAND OF JAMES I. 63 

the decease of the queen. Sir Robert Carey caught 
the token, fraught with the destiny of the island 
empire, and departed, at fiery speed, to announce 
the tidings in Scotland. 

Strickland, Elizabeth. 



THE STRAND IN THE REIGN OF JAMES I. 

It may be worth while to remind our readers, that 
the Temple Bar which Heriot passed, was not the 
arched screen, or gateway, of the present day; but 
an open railing, or palisade, which, at night, and in 
times of alarm, was closed with a barricade of posts 
and chains. 

The Strand also, along which he rode, was not, as 
now, a continued street, although it was beginning 
already to assume that character. It still might be 
considered as an open road, along the south side of 
which stood various houses and hotels belonging 
to the nobility, having gardens behind them down 
to the water-side, with stairs to the river, for the 
convenience of taking boat; which mansions have 
bequeathed the names of their lordly owners to 
many of the streets leading from the Strand to the 
Thames. The north side of the Strand was also a 
long line of houses, behind which, as in Saint Martin's 
Lane, and other points, buildings were rapidly 
arising; but Covent Garden was still a garden, in 
the literal sense of the word, or at least but beginning 
to be studded with irregular buildings. 



64 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

All that was passing around, however, marked the 
rapid increase of a capital which had long enjoyed 
peace, wealth, and a regular government. Houses 
were rising in every direction; and the shrewd eye 
of our citizen already saw the period not distant, 
which should convert the nearly open highway on 
which he travelled, into a connected and regular 
street, uniting the court and the town with the 
City of London. 

He next passed Charing Cross, which was no 
longer the pleasant solitary village at which the 
judges were wont to breakfast on their way to 
Westminster Hall, but began to resemble the artery 
through which, to use Johnson's expression, " pours 
the full tide of London population." The buildings 
were rapidly increasing, yet scarcely gave even a 
faint idea of its present appearance. 

Scott, Fortunes of Nigel. 



THE GUNPOWDER PLOT (1605) 

When the scheme was settled upon, Percy took, 
upon lease, a solitary house in Westminster Yard, 
near the House of Lords, where, about Michaelmas, 
1604, he and three of his four associates began to 
dig a subterraneous passage towards that edifice, 
while Fawkes, the least known of all the party, kept 
watch without. 

At this time, the Parliament was expected to meet 
.on the ensuing 7th of February; and it was their 



GUNPOWDER PLOT 65 

intention before that period, to have a large chamber 
excavated under the Parliament - House, wherein 
they should deposit the powder. The labour of 
digging was very severe to men who had hitherto 
lived so differently; but, to support existence, they 
had baked meats and wines brought into the vault — 
enthusiasm supplied the rest. They also had their 
arms deposited beside them as they wrought, being 
determined, in case of a discovery, to sell their lives 
as dearly as possible. 

Thus they proceeded with incredible diligence for 
about three months, carrying the rubbish out every 
night, and burying it beneath the soil of the adjacent 
garden. At last, about Christmas, they reached the 
wall of the Parliament-House, which, being three 
yards thick, proved a serious obstacle. Nevertheless, 
they continued for six weeks more, picking the hard 
old mason-work of that structure, through which 
they advanced at the rate of about a foot a week. 
At Candlemas, about five days before the expected 
meeting of Parliament, they had only got about 
half way through the wall, and were despairing of 
being ready in time, when, fortunately for them, 
the meeting was prorogued till the ensuing October. 

During the progress of their labour it was thought 
expedient to admit other two persons into the con- 
spiracy, for the sake of their assistance in digging; 
namely, Christopher Wright, brother to John Wright, 
and Robert Winter, the brother of Thomas. Previous 
to being made privy to the project, they were bound 
to secrecy under the following oath, which was 
c 



66 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

administered by Garnet, along with the communion: 
" You shall swear by the Blessed Trinity, and 
by the sacrament you now purpose to receive, never 
to disclose, directly nor indirectly, by word or cir- 
cumstance, the matter that shall be proposed to 
you to keep secret; nor desist from the execution 
thereof, until the rest shall give you leave." . . . 

On the evening of Saturday, the 26th of October, 
eleven days before the meeting of Parliament, 
Lord Mount eagle (son of Lord Morley, but himself 
a peer by inheritance from his mother), when about 
to sit down to supper, received a letter from one of 
his footmen, which the man said had been delivered 
to him by an " unknown man of a reasonable tall 
personage," as he was crossing the street on an errand 
with which his lordship had just commissioned him. 
This was in Mounteagle's lodging, in one of the 
streets of London. The young nobleman, having 
broken open the letter, and found it to be written 
in a somewhat cramped hand, caused one of his 
domestics to read it to him aloud ; when it was found 
to be literally as follows: 

" My lord out of the love i beare to some of youere 
frends i heave a caer of youer preservaceon therefor 
i would advyse yowe as yowe tender yower lyf to 
devyse some exscuse to shift of youer attendance 
at this parleament for god and man hath concurred 
to punishe the wickednes of this tyme and think 
not slyghtlye of this advertesment but retyere youre 
self into youre contri wheare yowe may expect the 
event in safti for thoughe thear be no apparance of 



GUNPOWDER PLOT 67 

anni stir yet i saye thayre shall recyve a terribel 
blowe this parleament and yet they shall not see who 
hurts them this cowncel is not to be contemned 
because it may do yowe goode and can do yowe no 
harme for the danger is passed as soon as yowe have 
burnt the letter and i hop god will give yowe the 
grace to mak a goode use of it to whose holy pro- 
tection i commend yowe." 

This letter was addressed on the back **■ To the 
Right Honourable the Lord Mow 't eagle"; but it 
was without date and subscription. . . . 

James read the letter, paused, read it again, and 
then remarked, that this was a warning by no means 
to be despised. This could be no pasquil, he said, 
no mere attempt at bringing Lord Mount eagle into 
a ludicrous situation; the style was too pithy and 
emphatic, too sincere, to be interpreted in that sense. 

Salisbury called his Majesty's attention to one 
particular sentence, " The danger is past as soon as 
you have burnt the letter," which he thought could 
only be the composition of a madman or a driveller; 
for, if the mere incremation of this frail sheet could 
avert the apprehended mischief, what need of the 
warning? James, however, was of opinion that that 
clause ought to be interpreted in another sense, 
that the danger would be as sudden and speedy 
in execution as the burning of a sheet of paper in 
the fire; and he therefore conjectured that it was 
by gunpowder under the House of Lords that the 
Parliament was to receive such " a terrible blow." 

Pasquil. A satire. 



68 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

Salisbury, who considered James " an under- 
standing prince, if any we ever had," was much 
struck by his reasoning on this subject, which, 
though not coincident with his own, led to the same 
conclusion. He left him, however, for that time, 
without proposing any measures of security, but 
rather " with a merrie jeast, as his custome was "; 
and it was not till after a second consultation with 
the four Earls, that he next day condescended to 
allow, before the King, that there was any necessity 
for such proceedings. 

It was then agreed between them, in presence of 
the Lord Chamberlain, that the latter officer should, 
in accordance with the duties of his office, institute 
a search through the apartments under the Parlia- 
ment-House; though not till the evening before 
Parliament was to assemble, in order that the plot, 
if any such existed, might be discovered at its very 
ripest. . . . 

On Monday afternoon, the search was made, as 
designed, by the Lord Chamberlain, accompanied 
by Whinyard, Keeper of the King's wardrobe, and 
by Lord Mounteagle. After inspecting several of 
the lower apartments and vaults, they came to that 
in which the conspirators had deposited their powder, 
which they found stuffed full of faggots, billets, and 
coal, together with some old furniture. 

The Chamberlain asked Whinyard for what purpose 
this apartment was kept, and was informed that it 
was let to Thomas Percy, the occupant of the neigh- 
bouring house, for a coal-cellar. Then casting his 



GUNPOWDER PLOT 69 

eye around the place, he observed a tall man standing 
in a comer — the demon Fawkes — who, on being 
questioned what he was, described himself as Percy's 
man, at present employed to keep the house and 
cellar in his master's absence. Here Lord Mount- 
eagle, who had accompanied the party, privately 
informed the Chamberlain that he could not help 
suspecting Percy to be the writer of the letter, 
recollecting, as he did, his suspected religion, and 
an old friendship which might have induced him to 
give him this warning. 

Notwithstanding this hint, Suffolk left the vault 
as he found it, but not till he had made an accurate, 
though apparently a very careless inspection of the 
place and its contents. On reporting what he had 
seen to the King and his little party of councillors, 
and acquainting them moreover with Mounteagle's 
suspicion, they felt themselves distracted between 
a desire of taking every precaution for the safety 
of the King's person, and a fear lest any search they 
might make would be found vain, and only draw 
upon them the ridicule of the public; all agreeing, 
however, that there were now more shrewd causes 
for suspicion than before. 

After this question had been discussed for some 
time with considerable anxiety, James decided them 
at last in favour of a search; but proposed that 
it should be conducted by a mere Justice of the 
Peace, and under pretence of inquiring for some 
hangings, lately missed out of the wardrobe; by 
which means, they might avoid giving offence to 



70 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

the Earl of Northumberland, Percy's kinsman and 
employer, and also save themselves from the proper 
consequences of the hoax, if such it should turn out. 

Towards midnight, therefore, Sir Thomas Knyvett, 
a gentleman of the King's bed-chamber, and who 
was at the same time one of the Justices of West- 
minster, proceeded with a small party of soldiers to 
the Parliament-House; leaving the King and his 
band of councillors to await the result in the privy 
gallery of Whitehall. 

Meanwhile, Fawkes, alarmed by the afternoon 
visit of the Chamberlain, but still resolved to run 
every risk, spent the evening in the vault, making 
the necessary arrangements for the explosion. 
Having just completed these preparations, he had 
quitted his den of latent sulphur, and was standing 
in front of the door, booted as for a journey, when 
Knyvett came up with his party, and took him 
prisoner. Then pushing forward into the vault, and 
turning over a few of the faggots, the party dis- 
covered one of the smaller barrels of powder, and 
eventually the whole thirty-six. 

There being no longer any doubt as to the con- 
spiracy, a gentleman was sent up to a chamber where 
Fawkes was disposed, in order to search and bind 
his person. The monster made great resistance; 
gripped the gentleman's left hand so violently as to 
provoke him to draw his dagger, which, however, 
he did not use, for the wish of procuring an organ 
of evidence; and when tripped up, and thrown 
upon the ground, where all the paraphernalia of 



GUNPOWDER PLOT 71 

matches, tinder-box, and dark-lantern, were taken 
from his person, he exclaimed in an agony of dis- 
appointed enthusiasm, that he wished he had had 
time to ignite the train, and thereby spend upon 
himself and his captors the engine of destruction, 
intended for a much larger and more important 
company. 

Chambers, Life of James I. 

Edmond Doubleday, Esquire, was of a tall and 
proper person, and lived in this city. Nor had this 
large case a little jewel, this long body a lazy soul, 
whose activity and valour was adequate to his 
strength and greatness, whereof he gave this eminent 
testimony. 

When Sir Thomas Knevet was sent, November 4, 
1605, by King James, to search the cellar beneath 
the Parliament-House, with very few, for the more 
privacy, to attend him, he took Master Doubleday 
with him. Here they found Guy Faux, with his 
dark-lanthorn, in the dead of night, providing for 
the death of many the next morning. He was newly 
come out of the Devil's Closet (so I may fitly term 
the inward room where the powder lay, and the train 
was to be laid) into the outward part of the cellar. 

Faux beginning to bustle, Master Doubleday 
instantly ordered him at his pleasure, up with his 
heels, and there with the traitor lay the treason 
flat along the floor, by God's goodness detected, 
defeated. Faux vowed (and, though he was a false 
traitor, herein I do believe him) that, had he been 



72 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

in the inner room, he would have blown up himself 
and all the company therein. Thus it is pleasant 
music to hear disarmed malice threaten, when it 
cannot strike. 

Master Doubleday lived many years after, de- 
servedly loved and respected; and died about the 
year of our Lord 1618. 

Fuller, Worthies. 



A BALLAD IN PRAISE OF LONDON 'PREN- 
TICES, AND WHAT THEY DID AT THE 
COCKPIT PLAYHOUSE, SHROVE TUES- 
DAY, 1617 

The 'prentices of London long 

Have famous been in story, 
But now they are exceeding all 

Their chronicles of glory; 
Look back, say some, to other day, 

But I say look before ye, 
And see the deed they have now done — 

Tom Brent and Johnny Cory. 

Tom Brent said then to his merry men, 

" Now whoop, my men, and hallo, 
And to the Cockpit let us go — 

I'll lead you like brave Rollo." 
Then Johnny Cory answered straight 

In words much like Apollo, 
" Lead, Tommy Brent, incontinent, 

And we be sure to follow." 



LONDON 'PRENTICES 73 

Three score of these brave 'prentices, 

All fit for works of wonder, 
Rush'd down the plain of Drury Lane, 

Like lightning and like thunder, 
And there each door, with hundreds more, 

And windows burst asunder, 
And to the tire-house broke they in, 

Which some began to plunder. 

" Now hold your hands, my merry men," 

Said Tom, " for I assure ye, 
Whoso begins to steal shall win 

Me both for judge and jury — 
And eke for executioner, 

Within this lane of Drury ; 
But tear and rend, I'll stand your friend, 

And will uphold your fury." . . . 

Books old and young in heap they flung, 

And burnt them in the blazes — 
Tom Dekker, Heywood, Middleton, 

And other wand 'ring crazes. 
Poor Day that day not 'scaped away, 

Nor what still more amazes, 
Immortal Cracke was burnt all black, 

Which everybody praises. 

Now sing we laud with one accord, 
To these most digni laude, 

Tire-house. Dressing-room. 

Dekker, Heywood, Middleton were writers of plays. 



74 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

Who thus intend to bring an end 

All that is vile and naughty; 
All players and others thrust out of doors 

Seductive all and gaudy, 
And praise we these bold 'prentices, 

Cum voce et cum corde. 



SIR WALTER RALEIGH IN THE TOWER 

The life of such a man as Raleigh, though shut up 
within the walls of a prison, might afford us in- 
struction as well as pleasure; but the notices that 
have been preserved of him, during the tedious 
years of his exclusion from the world, are few and 
not particular. . . . 

He had one consolation, however, — in the society 
of an amiable and affectionate wife, who had ob- 
tained leave to accompany him in prison, and he 
was countenanced by the queen and the prince 
during their lives, and continued his correspondence 
with them. Much of his time was spent in his favourite 
pursuit — the study and practice of chemistry, and 
he here wrote the History of the World, and several 
of the political discourses, which remain as proofs, 
if proofs were wanted, of his talents. . . . 

On the 24th of October, 1618, about two months 

after his recommittal to the Tower, Raleigh was 

informed that it was the king's intention that he 

should be put to death, and, four days afterwards, 

Cum voce . . . corde. With voice and heart. 



RALEIGH IN THE TOWER 75 

he was taken from his prison to the bar of the King's 
Bench, where execution was demanded against him 
— not for any new offence, but for the crime of which 
he had been convicted upwards of fourteen years 
before, although he had since been charged with a 
commission from the king, as admiral of his fleet, 
with power of martial law over his subjects! 

In his History of the World, as well as in the 
great variety of political, scientific, and commercial 
tracts, which proceeded from Sir Walter's pen, we 
find a vast extent of learning and research; a style 
equal to the best models of the day, and a pene- 
trating and sound judgment; nor, as a poet, does 
he rank in a lower sphere; his vein for ditty and 
amorous ode has been pronounced most lofty, in- 
solent, and passionate. The specimens which have 
been preserved show that he wrote with great ease; 
and they display, with a lively wit, sometimes a 
glowing, and sometimes a wild and romantic im- 
agination; for his improvements in naval archi- 
tecture he was entitled to the gratitude of the 
country; to his ardent spirit of enterprise may be 
attributed many important results, and, while his 
firmness was ever conspicuous in difficulty and 
danger, his bravery and zeal in the service of his 
prince have seldom had an equal; indeed, he was 
endowed with every qualification to defend his 
country in time of war, and to adorn it in that of 
peace. 

Bayley, Tower of London. 



76 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

A COURT MASK IN THE REIGN OF 
CHARLES I. 

On Candlemas Day (1633) in the afternoon, the 
maskers, horsemen, musicians, dancers, and all that 
were actors in this business, according to order, 
met at Ely House in Holborn. There the grand 
committee sat all day to order all affairs; and when 
the evening was come, all things being in full readi- 
ness, they began to set forth in this order down 
Chancery Lane to Whitehall. 

The first that marched were twenty footmen, in 
scarlet liveries with silver lace, each one having his 
sword by his side, a baton in his hand, and a torch 
lighted in the other hand; these were the marshal's 
men, who cleared the streets, made way, and were 
all about the marshal, waiting his commands. After 
them, and sometimes in the midst of them, came 
the marshal, then Mr. Darrel, afterwards knighted 
by the king; he was of Lincoln's Inn, an extra- 
ordinary handsome proper gentleman. He was 
mounted upon one of the king's best horses, and 
richest saddles, and his own habit was exceedingly 
rich and glorious; his horsemanship very gallant; 
and besides his marshal's men, he had two lackeys, 
who carried torches by him, and a page in livery 
that went by him, carrying his cloak. 

After him followed one hundred gentlemen of 

Candlemas. A Roman Catholic feast held on 2nd February, 
so called because many lights are used. 



A COURT MASK J7 

the Inns of Court, five-and-twenty chosen out of 
each house, of the most proper and handsome young 
gentlemen of the societies. Every one of them was 
gallantly mounted on the best horses, and with the 
best furniture that the king's stable and the stables 
of all the noblemen in town would afford, and they 
were forward on this occasion to lend them to the 
Inns of Court. 

Every one of these hundred gentlemen was in very 
rich clothes, scarce anything but gold and silver 
lace to be seen of them; and each gentleman had a 
page and two lackeys waiting on him in his livery 
by his horse's side; the lackeys carried torches, 
and the page his master's cloak. The richness of 
their apparel and furniture glittering by the light 
of a multitude of torches attending on them, with 
the motion and stirring of their metalled horses and 
the many and various gay liveries of their servants; 
but especially the personal beauty and gallantry 
of the handsome young gentlemen, made the most 
glorious and splendid show that ever was beheld in 
England. 

After the horsemen came the antimaskers, and 
as the horsemen had their music, about a dozen of 
the best trumpeters proper for them, and in their 
livery, sounding before them; so the first antimask 
being of cripples, and beggars on horseback, had 
their music of keys and tongues, and the like, snap- 
ping and yet playing in a concert before them. 

These beggars were also mounted, but on the 
poorest, leanest jades that could be got out of the 



78 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

dirt carts or elsewhere; and the variety and change 
from such noble music, and gallant horses, as went 
before them unto their proper music, and pitiful 
horses, made both of them the more pleasing. 

The habits and properties of these cripples and 
beggars were most ingeniously fitted (as of all the 
rest) by the commissioners' direction, wherein (as 
in the whole business) Mr. Attorney Noy, Sir John 
Finch, Sir Edward Herbert, Mr. Selden, those great 
and eminent persons, as all the rest of the committee, 
had often meetings, and took extraordinary care 
and pains in the ordering of this business, and it 
seemed a pleasure to them. 

After the beggars' antimask, came men on horse- 
back, playing upon pipes, whistles, and instruments 
sounding notes like those of birds of all sorts, and 
in excellent concert, and were followed by the 
antimask of birds; this was an owl in an ivy-bush, 
with many several sorts of other birds, in a cluster 
about the owl, gazing as it were upon her ; these were 
little boys, put into covers of the shapes of those 
birds, rarely fitted, and sitting on small horses, with 
footmen going by them, with torches in their hands; 
and here were some besides to look unto the children, 
and this was very pleasant to the beholders. 

After this antimask came other musicians on 
horseback, playing upon bagpipes, hornpipes, and 
such kind of northern music, speaking the following 
antimask of projectors to be of the Scotch and 
northern quarters ; and these as all the rest had many 
footmen with torches waiting on them. 



A COURT MASK 79 

First in this antimask rode a fellow upon a little 
horse with a great bit in his mouth, and upon the 
man's head was a bit, with headstall and reins 
fastened, and signified a projector who begged a 
patent that none in the kingdom might ride their 
horses, but with such bits as they should buy of 
him. 

Then came another fellow with a bunch of carrots 
upon his head, and a capon upon his fist, describing 
a projector who begged a patent of monopoly, as 
the first inventor of the art to feed capons fat with 
carrots, and that none but himself might make use 
of that invention, and have the privilege for fourteen 
years according to the statute. 

Several other projectors were in like manner 
personated in this antimask; and it pleased the 
spectators the more, because by it an information 
was covertly given to the king of the unfitness and 
the ridiculousness of these projects against the law; 
and the Attorney Noy, who had most knowledge of 
them, had a great hand in this antimask of the 
projectors. 

After this, and the rest of the antimasks were 
passed, all which are not here remembered, there 
came six of the chief musicians on horseback upon 
foot-cloths, and in the habits of heathen priests, 
and footmen carrying torches by them. 

After these musicians followed a large open chariot 
drawn by brave horses with large plumes of feathers 

Foot-cloths. Coverings for horses reaching down to the 
feet. 



80 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

on their heads and buttocks; the coachman and 
postillion in rich antique liveries. In the chariot 
were about a dozen persons in several habits of the 
gods and goddesses, and by them many footmen on 
all sides bearing torches. 

After this chariot followed six more of the musi- 
cians on horseback, with foot-cloths habited, and 
attended with torches as the former were. 

After them came another large open chariot like 
the former drawn by six gallant horses with feathers, 
liveries, and torches as the other had. 

These chariots were made purposely for this 
occasion; and in this latter chariot were about a 
dozen musicians in light habit (but all with some 
variety and distinction) as those in the first chariot. 

These going immediately next before the grand 
maskers' chariots played upon excellent and loud 
music all the way as they went. 

After this chariot came six more musicians on 
foot-cloths, horses habited and attended as the other. 

Then came the first chariot of the grand maskers, 
which was not so large as those that went before, 
but most curiously framed, carved, and painted with 
exquisite art, and purposely for this service and 
occasion. The form of it was after that of the Roman 
triumphal chariots, as near as could be gathered 
by some old prints and pictures extant of them. 
The seats in it were made of an oval form in the 
back end of the chariot, so that there was no pre- 
cedence in them, and the faces of all that sat in it 
might be seen together. 



A COURT MASK 81 

The colours of the first chariot were silver and 
crimson, given by the lot to Gray's Inn, as I remem- 
ber; the chariot was all over painted richly with 
these colours, even the wheels of it most artificially 
laid on, and the carved work of it was as curious 
for that art, and it made a stately show. It was 
drawn by four horses all on breast, and they were 
covered to their heels all over with cloth of tissue 
of the colours of crimson and silver, huge plumes of 
red and white feathers on their heads and buttocks. 
The coachman's cap and feather, his long coat, and 
his very whip and cushion of the same stuff and 
colour. 

In this chariot sat the four grand maskers of 
Gray's Inn, their habits, doublets, trunk hose, and 
caps, of most rich cloth of tissue, and wrought as 
thick with silver spangles as they could be placed, 
large white silk stockings up to their trunk hose, and 
rich sprigs in their caps; themselves proper and 
beautiful young gentlemen. 

On each side of the chariot were four footmen 
in liveries of the colour of the chariot, carrying huge 
flambeaux in their hands, which with the torches 
gave such a lustre to the paintings, spangles, and 
habits that hardly anything could be invented to 
appear more glorious. 

After this chariot came six more musicians on 
foot-cloths, and in habits like the former. These 
were followed by the second chariot as the lot fell 
for the Middle Temple. This differed not in anything 
from the former, but in colours only, which were of 



82 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

this chariot silver and blue. The chariot and horses 
were covered and decked with cloth of tissue of 
blue and silver, as the former was with silver and 
crimson. 

In this second chariot were the four grand maskers 
of the Middle Temple, in the same habits as the other 
maskers were, and with the like attendance, torches 
and flambeaux with the former. After these followed 
the third and the fourth chariots, and six musicians 
between each chariot, habited on foot-cloths and 
horses as before. The chariots were all of the same 
make, and alike carved and painted, differing only 
in the colours. 

In the third chariot rode the grand maskers of 
the Inner Temple, and in the fourth chariot went 
those of Lincoln's Inn according to the lot of each 
of them. 

The habits of the sixteen grand maskers were all 
the same, their persons most handsome and lovely, 
the equipage so full of state and height of gallantry 
that it was never out-done by any representation 
mentioned in our former stories. 

The torches and flaming huge flambeaux borne 
by the sides of each chariot made it seem lightsome 
as at noonday, but more glittering, and gave a full 
and clear light to all the streets and windows as they 
passed by. The march was slow in regard of their 
great number, but more interrupted by the multitude 
of the spectators in the streets, besides the windows, 
and they all seemed loth to part with so glorious a 
spectacle. 



A COURT MASK 83 

In the meantime the banqueting-house at White- 
hall was so crowded with fair ladies, glittering with 
their rich clothes and richer jewels, and with lords 
and gentlemen and great quality, that there was 
scarce room for the king and queen to enter in. The 
king and queen stood at a window looking straight 
forward into the street to see the mask come by, 
and being delighted with the noble bravery of it 
they sent to the marshal to desire that the whole 
show might fetch a turn about the tilt-yard, that 
their majesties might have a double view of them, 
which was done accordingly, and then they all 
alighted at Whitehall Gate, and were conducted to 
several rooms and places prepared for them. 

The king and queen and all their noble train being 
come in, the mask began, and was incomparably 
performed in the dancing, speeches, music, and 
scenes. The dances, figures, properties, the voices, 
instruments, songs, airs, composures, the words and 
actions, were all of them exact, and none failed 
in their parts of them, and the scenes were most 
curious and costly. 

The queen did the honour to some of the maskers 
to dance with them herself, and to judge them as 
good dancers as ever she saw, and the great ladies 
were very free and civil in dancing with all the 
maskers, as they were taken out by them. 

Thus they continued in their sports until it was 
almost morning, and then the king and queen 
retiring to their chamber the maskers and Inns of 
Court gentlemen were brought to a stately banquet, 



84 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

and after that were dispersed, every one departing 
to his own quarters. 

Thus was this earthly pomp and glory, if not 
vanity, soon passed over, and gone, as if it had 
never been. 

Bulstrode Whitelocke, Memorials of 
English Affairs. 



CHARLES I. IN THE HOUSE, 
4TH JANUARY, 1642 

Scarcely had the House reassembled, after the 
dinner hour's adjournment, for the renewal of the 
debate, when intelligence was brought by a Captain 
Langrish, who had passed the party in their way 
down the street, that the King, escorted by a guard 
of some hundreds of officers, soldiers, and other 
armed attendants, was advancing upon Westminster 
Hall. 

Private information had been received of this 
design by Lord Holland from Lady Carlisle, who 
was in the Queen's household; and by him it was 
communicated to Pym. To avoid the bloodshed 
which must probably have ensued, if the House, 
which had so lately pledged itself to its privileges, 
had been forced to defend them against armed men 
with the King in person at their head, the five 
members were ordered to withdraw, which, after 
some expostulation and resistance from Strode, they 
did. 



CHARLES I. IN THE HOUSE 85 

The King, meanwhile, entered New Palace Yard, 
and, proceeding through Westminster Hall, where 
his attendants ranged themselves on both sides, he 
ascended the stairs, and knocked at the door of the 
House of Commons. Entering, with his nephew, 
Charles, the Prince Palatine of the Rhine, at his 
side, he glanced his eye towards the place where 
Pym was wont to sit, and then walked directly to 
the chair. 

The Speaker, though commanded by the House 
to sit still with the mace before him, rose, with the 
rest of the members, at^the King's approach, and, 
leaving the steps of the chair to which the King 
ascended, flung himself on his knee before him. In 
vain did the King look round for the objects of his 
search. The members stood, with their heads un- 
covered, in stern respectful silence, while the King 
addressed the Speaker, Lenthall, in words which 
are well known as being the cause of this memorable 
reply : 

" May it please your Majesty, I have neither 
eyes to see, nor tongue to speak, in this place, but 
as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant 
I am here; and I humbly beg your Majesty's 
pardon that I cannot give any other answer than 
this to what your Majesty is pleased to demand 
of me." 

The King's speech, in answer, sufficiently shows 
how little, before he entered on this strange pro- 
ceeding, he had foreseen the chance of any part of 
his plan failing him. All the difficulties of his position 



86 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

now at once rushed to his mind. He saw no means 
of honourable or dignified retreat. 

He looked around from the chair, and he saw all 
eyes bent upon him; every countenance expressive 
of amazement at his rashness, but all men deter- 
mined to act the great part he had imposed upon 
them, as became their position, their engagements, 
and their duties. He looked down, and he saw the 
Speaker, in the posture which denoted an awful 
sense of what was demanded of him by the presence 
before which he knelt, but to which he would not 
surrender the trust with which the Commons had 
invested him. At the table sat Rushworth, taking 
down the words which alone broke that portentous 
silence, and which, on the morrow, must sound in 
every ear in the Metropolis, to spread alarm through 
the empire, and to be delivered down to all posterity 
with the story of that day. 

The King's reply was weak and confused, and it 
bore not on the question. " There is no privilege in 
cases of treason. ... I intend nothing but to pro- 
ceed against them in a fair and legal way." 

The breach of privilege was his entering the 
House; the breach of law was his endeavouring to 
execute a committal for treason without examination 
and without warrant. 

" I tell you I do expect that, as soon as they come 
to the House, you will send them to me, otherwise 
I must take my own course to find them." 

He must have known that the House could not, 
after the unanimous declaration for the defence of 



THE STRAND MAYPOLE 87 

its privileges, suffer its members to be surrendered 
at this illegal bidding; and thus he retired, amid 
loud and repeated cries of "Privilege, privilege!" 
The House instantly adjourned. 

Nugent, Memorials of John Hampden. 



THE STRAND MAYPOLE 

The Maypole stood in front of the site of St. Mary's, 
and in the place where had been formerly the stone 
cross. The setting up of this Maypole is attributed 
to John Clarges, blacksmith, whose daughter had 
married Monk, afterwards Duke of Albemarle. The 
parliamentary ordinance of 1644 swept away this 
among all the rest of the Maypoles; but, on the 
Restoration, a new and loftier one was raised with 
great ceremony and rejoicing. 

From a rare tract, entitled The Citie's Loyalty 
Displayed, published at the time, it appears the 
pole was a stately cedar, one hundred and thirty- 
four feet long, a choice and remarkable piece, made 
below bridge, and brought in two parts up to Scot- 
land Yard. From thence it was conveyed, on the 
14th of April, to the Strand, a streamer flourishing 
before it, amidst the beating of drums and the 
sound of merry music. The Duke of York sent 
twelve seamen with cables, pulleys, etc., with six 
great anchors, to assist in raising it; and after them 
came three men, bareheaded, carrying three crowns. 
The pieces were then joined together and hooped 



88 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

with bands of iron, the crowns, with the King's 
arms, richly gilt, were placed on the top, the trum- 
pets sounded, the men began their work, and in four 
hours' time it was raised upright and established 
fast in the ground. Then the drums and trumpets 
beat again, and the Strand resounded with the 
shouts of the assembled multitudes. A party of 
morrice-dancers now came, " finely decked with 
purple scarves, in their half-shirts, with a tabor and 
a pipe, the ancient music, and danced round about 
the Maypole." . . . 

All that's fair must fade, and Maypoles enjoy no 
special exemption. In 1713 it became necessary to 
have a new one, which was accordingly set up on 
the 4th of July, with two gilt balls and a vane on 
the summit, and, on particular days, the extra 
decorations of flags and garlands. This was removed 
about the time of the erection of the New Church, 
and presented b}^ the parish to Sir Isaac Newton, 
who sent it to the rector of Wanstead; that gentle- 
man caused it to be raised in Wanstead Park, to 
support the then largest telescope in Europe. 

Knight, London. 



ESCAPE OF CHARLES L (1647) 

Whilst these things were thus agitated between 
the army and the Parliament and the city, the King 
enjoyed himself at Hampton Court, much more to 
his content than he had of late; the respects of the 



ESCAPE OF CHARLES I. 89 

chief officers of the army seeming much greater 
than they had been; Cromwell himself came oftener 
to him, and had longer conferences with him ; talked 
with more openness to Mr. Ashburnham than he 
had done, and appeared more cheerful. 

Persons of all conditions repaired to his Majesty 
of those who had served him; with whom he con- 
ferred without reservation; and the citizens flocked 
thither as they had used to do at the end of a progress, 
when the King had been some months absent from 
London; but that which pleased his Majesty most, 
was that his children were permitted to come to 
him, in whom he took great delight. They were all 
at the Earl of Northumberland's house at Sion, 
from the time the King came to Hampton Court, 
and had liberty to attend his Majesty when he 
pleased ; so that sometimes he sent for them to come 
to Hampton Court, and sometimes he went to them 
to Sion; which gave him great satisfaction. . . . 

There is reason to believe that he did resolve to 
transport himself beyond the seas, which had been 
no hard matter to have brought to pass; but with 
whom he consulted for the way of doing it, is not 
to this day discovered; they who were instrumental 
in his remove, pretending to know nothing of the 
resolution, or counsel. 

But, one morning, being the eleventh of Novem- 
ber, the King having, the night before, pretended 
some indisposition, and that he would go to his 
rest, they who went into his chamber found that he 
was not there, nor had been in his bed that night. 



9 o LONDON IN LITERATURE 

There were two or three letters found upon his table, 
writ all with his own hand, one to the Parliament, 
another to the General; in which he declared " the 
reason of his remove to be, an apprehension that 
some desperate persons had a design to assassinate 
him; and therefore he had withdrawn himself with 
a purpose of remaining concealed, until the Parlia- 
ment had agreed upon such propositions as should 
be fit for him to consent to; and he would then 
appear, and willingly consent to anything that 
should be for the peace and happiness of the 
kingdom." 

There were discovered the treading of horses at 
a back door of the garden into which his Majesty 
had a passage out of his chamber; and it is true 
that way he went, having appointed his horse to 
be there ready at an hour, and Sir John Berkley, 
Ashburnham, and Legg, to wait upon him, the two 
last being of his bed-chamber. Ashburnham alone 
seemed to know what they were to do, the other 
two having received orders only to attend. When 
they were free from the apprehension of the guards, 
and the horse quarters, they rode towards the south- 
west, and towards that part of Hampshire which 
led to the New Forest. The King asked Ashburn- 
ham, where the ship lay? which made the other 
two conclude that the King resolved to transport 
himself. 

Clarendon, History of the Rebellion. 



CHARLES I. AND HIS JUDGES 91 



CHARLES I. AND HIS JUDGES AT 
WESTMINSTER HALL 

In January, 1648, the court sat, the king was brought 
to his trial, and a charge drawn up against him for 
levying war against the parliament and people of 
England, for betraying the public trust reposed in 
him, and for being an implacable enemy to the 
commonwealth. But the king refused to plead, 
disowning the authority of the court, and after three 
several days persisting in contempt thereof, he was 
sentenced to suffer death. 

One thing was remarked in him by many of the 
court, that when the blood spilt in many of the 
battles where he was in his own person, and had 
caused it to be shed by his own command, was laid 
to his charge, he heard it with disdainful smiles, 
and looks and gestures which rather expressed 
sorrow that all the opposite party to him were not 
cut off, than that any were; and he stuck not to 
declare in words, that no man's blood spilt in this 
quarrel troubled him except one, meaning the Earl 
of Strafford. 

The gentlemen that were appointed his judges, 
and divers others, saw in him a disposition so bent 
on the ruin of all that opposed him, and of all the 
righteous and just things they had contended for, 
that it was upon the consciences of many of them, 
that if they did not execute justice upon him, God 



92 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

would require at their hands all the blood and 
desolation which should ensue by their suffering 
him to escape, when God had brought him into 
their hands. Although the malice of the malignant 
party and their apostate brethren seemed to threaten 
them, yet they thought they ought to cast them- 
selves upon God, while they acted with a good con- 
science for him and for their country. 

Some of them afterwards, for excuse, belied them- 
selves, and said they were under the awe of the 
army, and overpersuaded by Cromwell, and the 
like; but it is certain that all men herein were left 
to their free liberty of acting, neither persuaded 
nor compelled; and as there were some nominated 
in the commission who never sat, and others who 
sat at first, but durst not hold on, so all the rest 
might have declined it if they would, when it is 
apparent they would have suffered nothing by so 
doing. For those who then declined were afterwards, 
when they offered themselves, received in again and 
had places of more trust and benefit than those 
which ran the utmost hazard; which they deserved 
not, for I know upon certain knowledge that many, 
yea the most of them, retreated, not for conscience, 
but from fear and worldly prudence, foreseeing that 
the insolency of the army might grow to that height 
as to ruin the cause, and reduce the kingdom into 
the hands of the enemy; and then those who had 
been most courageous in their country's cause would 
be given up as victims. 

These poor men did privately animate those who 



CHARLES I. AND HIS JUDGES 93 

appeared most publicly, and I knew several of them 
in whom I lived to see that saying of Christ fulfilled, 
" He that will save his life shall lose it, and he that 
for my sake will lose his life shall save it "; when 
afterwards it fell out that all their prudent declen- 
sions saved not the lives of some nor the estates of 
others. 

As for Mr. Hutchinson, although he was very 
much confirmed in his judgment concerning the 
cause, yet herein being called to an extraordinary 
action, whereof many were of several minds, he 
addressed himself to God by prayer; desiring the 
Lord that, if through any human frailty he were 
led into any error or false opinion in these great 
transactions, he would open his eyes, and not suffer 
him to proceed, but that he would confirm his spirit 
in the truth, and lead him by a right enlightened 
conscience; and finding no check, but a confirmation 
in his conscience that it was his duty to act as he 
did, he, upon serious debate, both privately and in 
his addresses to God, and in conferences with con- 
scientious, upright, unbiassed persons, proceeded to 
sign the sentence against the king. 

Although he did not then believe but that it might 
one day come to be again disputed among men, 
yet both he and others thought they could not 
refuse it without giving up the people of God, whom 
they had led forth and engaged themselves unto by 
the oath of God, into the hands of God's and their 
own enemies; and therefore he cast himself upon 
God's protection, acting according to the dictates 



94 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

of a conscience which he had sought the Lord to 
guide, and accordingly the Lord did signalise his 
favour afterwards to him. 

Lucy Hutchinson, Memoirs of the Life of 
Colonel Hutchinson. 



THE CURTAIN CHAMPION 

I shall give you under this head, a story very well 
known to several persons, and which you may 
depend upon as a real truth. 

Every one, who is acquainted with Westminster 
School, knows that there is a curtain which used to 
be drawn across the room, to separate the upper 
school from the lower. A youth happened, by some 
mischance, to tear the above-mentioned curtain. 
The severity of the matter was too well known for 
the criminal to expect any pardon for such a fault; 
so that the boy, who was of a meek temper, was 
terrified to death at the thoughts of his appearance, 
when his friend, who sat next to him, bade him be 
of good cheer, for that he would take the fault on 
himself. 

As soon as they were grown up to be men, the 
civil war broke out, in which our two friends took 
the opposite sides; one of them followed the Parlia- 
ment, the other the Royal Party. 

As their tempers were different, the youth, who 
had torn the curtain, endeavoured to raise himself 
on the civil list, and the other, who had borne the 



THE CURTAIN CHAMPION 95 

blame of it, on the military. The first succeeded so 
well, that he was in a short time made a judge under 
the Protector. The other was engaged in the un- 
happy enterprise of Penruddock and Groves in the 
West. 

I suppose, sir, I need not acquaint you with the 
event of that undertaking. Every one knows that 
the Royal Party was routed, and all the heads of 
them, among whom was the curtain champion, 
imprisoned at Exeter. 

It happened to be his friend's lot to go to the 
Western circuit. The trial of the rebels, as they 
were then called, was very short, and nothing now 
remained but to pass sentence on them; when the 
Judge, hearing the name of his old friend, and 
observing his face more attentively, which he had 
not seen for many years, asked him, if he was not 
formerly a Westminster scholar? 

By the answer, he was soon convinced that it 
was his former generous friend ; and, without saying 
anything more at that time, made the best of his 
way to London, where employing all his power and 
interest with the Protector, he saved his friend from 
the fate of his unhappy associates. 

The gentleman, whose life was thus preserved by 
the gratitude of his school-fellow, was afterwards 
the father of a son, whom he lived to see promoted 
in the church, and who still deservedly fills one of 
the highest stations in it. 

The Spectator, 1711. 



96 LONDON IN LITERATURE 



LOYAL WESTMINSTER 

It was at " untaintedly loyal " Westminster that 
the dauntless South, then a boy at school, and reader 
that morning of the customary Latin prayers, 
prayed publicly for King Charles I. by name on the 
fatal 30th of January, 1648, " but an hour or two 
before the monarch's head was struck off." Here, 
too, the famous Busby is reported to have walked 
beside Charles II. with his head covered, apologising 
at the same time to the King, for this apparent 
breach of decorum, by saying that if his boys sup- 
posed there were any greater in the realm than he, 
there would be at once an end to his authority. . . . 

We have already mentioned the circumstance of 
South's praying for Charles I. by name on the 
morning when the King was beheaded. The same 
spirit of fearlessness appears to have characterised 
the Westminsters on more than one occasion since. 

A few years after the execution of Charles I., when 
the mob attempted to break open the gates of West- 
minster Abbey, they were beaten back by the boys, 
aided only by a few servants of the place. On Nov. 5, 
1681, we read, " The Westminster School boys 
burned Jack Presbyter instead of the Pope." Another 
time, during the contest between the famous Bentley 
and Sergeant Miller, Dr. Bentley "sent for Zachary 
Pearce (afterwards Bishop of Rochester), one of 
the aspirants to the vacant fellowship, and suggested 
that he, being a Westminster scholar, might bring 



LOYAL WESTMINSTER 97 

a body of students educated in that school, among 
whom a great esprit de corps existed, to block out 
the Sergeant by manual force." It need hardly be 
said that this suggestion was not actually adopted; 
but the proposal serves to illustrate the manner in 
which Old Westminsters clung together in after 
life. 

Perhaps the most remarkable anecdote of this 
class is that of the punishment inflicted by the boys 
on Curll, the publisher, in 1716, which is told in a 
letter, circulated at the time, as follows: 

King's College, Westminster, 

Aug. 8, 1716. 
Sir, 

You are desired to acquaint the public that a 
certain bookseller, near Temple Bar (not taking 
warning by the frequent drubs that he has under- 
gone for his often pirating other men's copies), did 
lately (without the consent of Mr. John Barber, 
present captain of Westminster School) publish the 
scraps of a funeral oration spoken by him over 
the corpse of the Revd. Dr. South, and being, on 
Thursday last, fortunately nabbed within the limits 
of Dean's Yard, by the King's Scholars, there he 
met with a college salutation; for he was first 
presented with the ceremony of the blanket, in 
which, when the skeleton had been well shook, he 
was carried in triumph to the school; and, after 
receiving a grammatical correction for his false 
concords, he was reconducted to Dean's Yard, and, 

D 



98 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

on his knees, asking pardon of the said Mr. Barber 
for his offence, he was kicked out of the yard, and 
left to the huzzas of the rabble. 

I am, Sir, 

Yours, 

" T. A." 
Staunton, The Great Schools of England. 



PRIDE'S PURGE 

On Monday 4th December, the House, for the last 
time, takes " into farther debate " • the desperate 
question, Whether his Majesty's concessions in that 
Treaty of Newport are a ground of settlement? — 
debates it all Monday ; has debated it all Friday and 
Saturday before. Debates it all Monday, " till five 
o'clock next morning " ; at five o'clock next morning, 
decides it, Yea. By a Majority of Forty-six, One- 
hundred-and-twenty-nine to Eighty-three, it is at 
five o'clock on Tuesday morning decided, Yea, they 
are a ground of settlement. The Army Chiefs and 
the Minority consult together, in deep and deepest 
deliberation, through that day and night; not, I 
suppose, without Prayer ; and on the morrow 
morning this is what we see: 

Wednesday 6th December 1648, " Colonel Rich's 

regiment of horse and Colonel Pride's regiment of 

foot were a guard to the Parliament; and the City 

Trainbands were discharged " from that employ- 

Trainbands. The early militia. 



PRIDE'S PURGE 99 

ment. Yes, they were! Colonel Rich's horse stand 
ranked in Palace Yard, Colonel Pride's foot in 
Westminster Hall and at all entrances to the Commons 
House, this day; and in Colonel Pride's hand is a 
written list of names, names of the chief among the 
Hundred-and-twenty-nine; and at his side is my 
Lord Grey of Groby, who, as this Member after that 
comes up, whispers or beckons, " He is one of them; 
he cannot enter! " And Pride gives the word, " To 
the Queen's Court"; and Member after Member is 
marched thither, Forty-one of them this day, and 
kept there in a state bordering on rabidity, asking, 
" By what Law? " and ever again, " By what Law? " 
Is there a colour or faintest shadow of Law, to be 
found in any of the Books, Yearbooks, Rolls of 
Parliament, Bractons, Fletas, Cokes upon Lyttleton, 
for this ? Hugh Peters visits them; has little comfort, 
no light as to the Law; confesses, " It is by the Law 
of Necessity; truly, by the Power of the Sword." 

It must be owned the Constable's baton is fairly 
down, this day; overborne by the Power of the 
Sword, and a Law not to be found in any of the 
Books. 

At evening the distracted Forty-one are marched 
to Mr. Duke's Tavern hard-by, a " Tavern called 
Hell " ; and very imperfectly accommodated for the 
night. Sir Symonds D'Ewes, who has ceased taking 
notes long since; Mr. William Prynne, louder than 
any in the question of Law; Waller, Massey, Harley, 
and other remnants of the old Eleven, are of this 
unlucky Forty-one; among whom too we count 



ioo LONDON IN LITERATURE 

little Clement Walker " in his gray suit with his 
little stick," — asking in the voice of the indomitablest 
terrier or Blenheim cocker, " By what Law? I ask 
again, By what Law? " Whom no mortal will ever 
be able to answer. 

Such is the far-famed Purging of the House by 
Colonel Pride. 

Carlyle, Letters and Speeches of Cromwell. 



"THIS BAUBLE!" 20TH APRIL, 1653 

" The Parliament sitting as usual, and being in 
debate upon the Bill with the amendments, which 
it was thought would have been passed that day, 
the Lord General Cromwell came into the House, 
clad in plain black clothes and gray worsted stockings, 
and sat down, as he used to do, in an ordinary place." 

For some time he listens to this interesting debate 
on the Bill; beckoning once to Harrison, who came 
over to him, and answered dubitatingly. Where- 
upon the Lord General sat still, for about a quarter 
of an hour longer. But now the question being to 
be put, That this Bill do now pass, he beckons again 
to Harrison, says, " This is the time; I must do it! " 

And so " rose up, put off his hat, and spake. At 
the first, and for a good while, he spake to the com- 
mendation of the Parliament for their pains and 
care of the public good; but afterwards he changed 
his style, told them of their injustice, delays of 



" THIS BAUBLE! ", 101 

justice, self-interest, and other faults," — rising higher 
and higher, into a very aggravated style indeed. 

An honourable Member, Sir Peter Wentworth by 
name, not known to my readers, and by me better 
known than trusted, rises to order, as we phrase it; 
says, "It is a strange language this: unusual within 
the walls of Parliament this! And from a trusted 
servant too; and one whom we have so highly 
honoured; and one — " 

" Come, come! " exclaims my Lord General in a 
very high key, " we have had enough of this," — and 
in fact my Lord General, now blazing all up into 
clear conflagration, exclaims, " I will put an end 
to your prating," and steps forth into the floor of 
the House, and " clapping on his hat," and occasion- 
ally " stamping the floor with his feet," begins a 
discourse which no man can report ! 

He says — Heavens! he is heard saying: "It is 
not fit that you should sit here any longer! " You 
have sat too long here for any good you have been 
doing lately. " You shall now give place to better 
men! Call them in! " adds he briefly, to Harrison, 
in word of command; and "some twenty or thirty" 
grim musketeers enter with bullets in their snap- 
hances; grimly prompt for orders; and stand in 
some attitude of Carry-arms there. Veteran men; 
men of might and men of war, their faces are as the 
faces of lions, and their feet are swift as the roes 
upon the mountains; — not beautiful to honourable 
gentlemen at this moment. 

Snaphances. Rifles. 



102 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

" You call yourselves a Parliament," continues 
my Lord General in clear blaze of conflagration; 
" You are no Parliament; I say you are no Parlia- 
ment! Some of you are drunkards," and his eye 
flashes on poor Mr. Chaloner, an official man of some 

value, addicted to the bottle; " some of you are " 

and he glares into Harry Marten, and the poor Sir 
Peter who rose to order, lewd livers both; "living 
in open contempt of God's commandments. Following 
your own greedy appetites, and the devil's com- 
mandments. Corrupt unjust persons," and here I 
think he glanced at Sir Bulstrode Whitlocke, one 
of the Commissioners of the Great Seal, giving him 
and others very sharp language, though he named 
them not; " Corrupt unjust persons; scandalous 
to the profession of the Gospel; how can you be a 
Parliament for God's people? Depart, I say; and let 
us have done with you. In the name of God — go! " 

The House is of course all on its feet, — uncertain 
almost whether not on its head; such a scene as was 
never seen before in any House of Commons. History 
reports with a shudder that my Lord General, lifting 
the sacred Mace itself, said, " What shall we do with 
this bauble? Take it away! " — And gave it to a 
musketeer. 

And now, — " Fetch him down! " says he to Harri- 
son, flashing on the Speaker. Speaker Lenthall, 
more an ancient Roman than anything else, declares, 
he will not come till forced. " Sir," said Harrison, 
" I will lend you a hand "; on which Speaker Len- 
thall came down and gloomily vanished. 



FOX INTERVIEWS CROMWELL 103 

They all vanished; flooding gloomily, clamorously 
out to their ulterior businesses, and respective places 
of abode; the Long Parliament is dissolved. 

Carlyle, Letters and Speeches of Cromwell. 



GEORGE FOX, THE QUAKER, INTERVIEWS 
CROMWELL 

After some time Captain Drury brought me before 
the Protector himself at Whitehall: it was in a 
morning, before he was dressed; and one Harvey, 
who had come a little among Friends, but was dis- 
obedient, waited upon him. 

When I came in I was moved to say: " Peace be 
in this house "; and I bade him keep in the fear of 
God, that he might receive wisdom from him, that 
by it he might be ordered, and with it might order 
all things under his hand unto God's glory. I spoke 
much to him of truth, and a great deal of discourse 
I had with him about religion; wherein he carried 
himself very moderately. 

But he said we quarrelled with priests, whom he 
called ministers. I told him, I did not quarrel with 
them, but they quarrelled with me and my friends. 

" But," said I, " if we own the prophets, Christ, 
and the apostles, we cannot hold up such teachers, 
prophets, and shepherds as the prophets, Christ, 
and the apostles declared against; but we must 
declare against them by the same power and spirit." 



104 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

Then I showed him that the prophets, Christ, 
and the apostles declared freely, and declared against 
them that did not declare freely; such as preached 
for filthy lucre, and divined for money, and preached 
for hire, and were covetous and greedy, like the 
dumb dogs that could never have enough; and that 
they that have the same spirit with Christ, and the 
prophets, and the apostles, could not but declare 
against all such now, as they did then. 

As I spoke, he would several times say it was very 
good, and it was truth. 

I told him that all Christendom (so called) had the 
scriptures, but they wanted the power and spirit 
that those had who gave forth the scriptures, and 
that was the reason they were not in fellowship with 
the Son, nor with the Father, nor with the scriptures, 
nor one with another. 

Many more words I had with him, but people 
coming in, I drew a little back ; and as I was turning 
he catched me by the hand, and with tears in his 
eyes said: " Come again to my house, for if thou 
and I were but an hour of a day together, we should 
be nearer one to the other "; adding that he wished 
me no more ill than he did to his own soul. 

I told him if he did he wronged his own soul, and 
I bade him hearken to God's voice that he might 
stand in his counsel and obey it; and if he did so, 
that would keep him from hardness of heart; but 
if he did not hear God's voice his heart would be 
hardened. And he said it was true. 

Then I went out, and when Captain Drury came 



JOCELYN AT JOHN MILTON'S 105 

out after me he told me his lord Protector said I 
was at liberty, and might go whither I would. 

Then I was brought into a great hall, where the 
Protector's gentlemen were to dine. And I asked 
them what they brought me hither for. They said 
it was by the Protector's order that I might dine 
with them. I bade them let the Protector know I 
would not eat a bit of his bread, nor drink a sup of 
his drink. 

When he heard this he said : " Now I see there 
is a people risen and come up that I cannot win 
either with gifts, honours, offices, or places; but all 
other sects and people I can." 

It was told him again that we had forsaken our 
own, and were not like to look for such things from 
him. 

George Fox, Journal. 



JOCELYN FLEEING FROM THE BAILIFFS 
TAKES REFUGE AT JOHN MILTON'S 

As he was returning from Aldersgate Street, he 
observed himself to be dogged by two men, whom he 
presently recognised to be bailiffs, and who, by their 
motions, were evidently holding him in pursuit. . . . 

Unfortunately for the beaux of those days, they 
were much more conspicuous in their attire, and 
consequently had much less chance of escape, than 
their modern successors. Jocelyn wore a richly* 
embroidered doublet of deer-coloured velvet with 



106 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

silver buttons and loops, the collar standing on end 
with plaiting of the same metal; his philamott, or 
gold-coloured cloak, was edged with a deep lace; a 
Buckingham or Montero hat covered his dark flowing 
and scented periwig; his band was trimmed with 
pointe d'Espagne, and a profusion of well-gummed 
satin ribbons, of orange colour, red and tawny, 
decorated his hat, his sword, the knees of his black 
cannon hose, his russet shoes, his periwig, and, in 
short, every part of his person to which they could be 
attached; such silken trappings being at that moment 
an indispensable appendage to every man of fashion. 

Such a gaudy apparition, rustling and fluttering 
through the air like a huge painted butterfly, was 
not likely to be lost to the inquiries of his pursuers, 
even if he escaped for a few moments from their 
sight; and, as he was obliged every now and then 
to stop and take breath, the bailiffs, tracking him 
with the patient perseverance of hounds, were sure 
to appear just as he had flattered himself that they 
were fairly distanced and at fault. 

After keeping up this sort of flight through a 
variety of streets, with the names of which he was 
unacquainted, he at length found himself in the 
Artillery Walk, adjoining Bunhill Fields, and, being 
nearly exhausted with his efforts, he turned suddenly 
up a passage, resolved to seek shelter in the first 
house that should offer, and thus take the chance 
of eluding his pursuers. 

A side-door presenting itself at the entrance of 
the passage, he pulled the latch; it opened; he 



JOCELYN AT JOHN MILTON'S 107 

entered as quietly as possible; again closed the 
door; and found himself in a small anteroom, hung 
round with shelves of dark old-fashioned-looking 
books, most of them in folio or quarto. 

In one corner was a small recess in which stood 
an open organ, the appearance of which indicated 
that it was an old possession of its proprietor, and 
was in habitual use. On a circular table in the middle 
of the chamber were two folio bibles, one in Hebrew 
and one in English; and on the mantel-shelf were 
several pipes, with a tea-cup containing tobacco; 
the smell of the room, as well as its dusky hue, 
sufficiently attesting that it was often fumigated by 
the use of that fragrant herb. 

From these appearances, it might be conjectured 
that the house belonged to a man of mean condition 
and studious habits; and while Jocelyn was specu- 
lating upon the probable profession of its owner, 
a deep, solemn, and sonorous voice from an ad- 
joining chamber exclaimed aloud: 

The floating vessel'swam 
Uplifted, and, secure with beaked prow, 
Rode tilting o'er the waves; all dwellings else 
Flood overwhelm' d, and them with all their pomp, 
Deep under water roll'd; sea covered sea, 
Sea without shore ; and in their palaces, 
Where luxury late reign'd, sea monsters whelp'd 
And stabled. 

Under any other circumstances he would have 
continued a delighted listener to this sublime strain; 
but just at this moment he saw his pursuers making 
inquiries at the opposite side of the street; and, 



io8 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

observing that, from the lowness of the window, 
they might look into the room and discover him, 
he determined to waive all ceremony; and, accord- 
ingly, opening the door of communication, he stepped 
into the adjoining apartment. 

It was larger and lighter than the one he had 
quitted, and the books it contained were scattered 
about with greater confusion. Fronting him, in an 
arm-chair, there sat a venerable-looking blind old 
man, his curling grey hair falling down upon either 
shoulder, and his sightless orbs upturned to heaven, 
as, in the enthusiasm of the moment, he continued 
his recitation, apparently unconscious of the in- 
trusion. By his side was a young female seated at 
a desk, and writing, behind whom was another, 
with her back towards Jocelyn, as she stood upon a 
chair to reach down a book. 

These figures were Milton, dictating the Paradise 
Lost to his daughters. . . . 

With many apologies for his intrusion, Jocelyn 
now briefly explained the circumstances that had 
led to it, imploring protection for a short time, but 
offering to retire immediately should his longer 
presence be deemed inadmissible. 

The bard declared that, as his humble residence 
had been a Zoar and a place of refuge to himself, so 
should it prove to the pilgrim and the wayfarer that 
sought the protection of its roof, beneath which he 
invited Jocelyn to remain until the danger had passed 
away, but concluded by ordering both his daughters 
to retire instantly to their own apartment. 



THE STATUE TO CHARLES I. 109 

This injunction they appeared to obey with some 
hesitation, casting sundry glances at their uninvited 
visitant, whose striking figure, not less than the 
inordinate finery of his dress, were calculated to 
excite no small admiration in young ladies who had 
for a long time been habituated only to such homely 
and mechanical figures as were to be encountered in 
the sequestered and religious precincts of Bunhill Row. 
Horace Smith, Brambletye House. 



ON THE STATUE TO KING CHARLES I. 
AT CHARING CROSS 

That the First Charles does here in triumph ride, 
See his son reign where he a martyr died, 
And people pay that reverence as they pass, 
(Which then he wanted !) to the sacred brass, 
Is not the effect of gratitude alone, 
To which we owe the statue and the stone; 
But Heaven this lasting monument has wrought, 
That mortals may eternally be taught 
Rebellion, though successful, is but vain, 
And kings so killed rise conquerors again, 
This truth the royal image does proclaim, 
Loud as the trumpet of surviving fame. 

Edmund Waller. 

Note. — Waller, like the Vicar of Bray, always sought the 
favour of those who were in power. Thus he praised in turn 
Charles I. and Cromwell. When Charles II. remarked that 
the poet did his best work under the Commonwealth, Waller 
replied that he could produce the best poetry when dealing 
with fiction ! 



no LONDON IN LITERATURE 



PEPYS'S NOTES ON ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL 

February yth, 1660. Went to Paul's School, where 
he that made the speech for the seventh form in 
praise of the Founder did show a book which Mr. 
Crumlum (the Master) had lately got, which he 
believed to be of the Founder's own writing. My 
brother John came off as well as any of the rest in 
the speeches. 

December 23rd, 1661. Lighting at my bookseller's 
in St. Paul's Churchyard, I met there with Mr. 
Crumlum, and the second master of Paul's School, 
and thence I took them to the Star, and there we 
sat and talked, and I had great pleasure in their 
company, and very glad I was of meeting him so 
accidentally, I having omitted too long to go to see 
him. Here in discourse of books I did offer to give 
the school what book he would choose of £5. So we 
parted. 

2jth. In the morning to my bookseller's, to bespeak 
a Stephens' Thesaurus, for which I offer £4, to give 
to Paul's School, and from thence to Paul's Church. 

February 4th, 1663. To Paul's School, it being 
Opposition-day there. I heard some of their speeches, 
and they were just as schoolboys used to be, of the 
seven liberal sciences; but I think not so good as 
ours were in our time. Thence to Bow Church, to 
the Court of Arches, where a judge sits, and his 
proctors about him in their habits, and their pleadings 
all in Latin. Here I was sworn to give a true answer 



PLAGUE NOTES IN PEPYS in 

to my uncle's libels. And back again to Paul's School, 
and went up to see the head forms posed in Latin, 
Greek, and Hebrew; but I think they do not answer 
in any so well as we did, only in geography they did 
pretty well. Dr. Wilkins and Outram were examiners. 
So down to the school, where Mr. Crumlum did me 
much honour by telling many what a present I had 
made to the school, showing my Stephanus in four 
volumes. He also showed us upon my desire an old 
edition of the grammar of Colet's, where his epistle 
to the children is very pretty: and in rehearsing the 
creed it is said " borne of the cleane Virgin Mary." 
March gth, 1665. At Paul's School, where I visited 
Mr. Crumlum at his house; and, Lord! to see how 
ridiculous a conceited pedagogue he is, though a 
learned man, he being so dogmatical in all he does 
and says. But, among other discourses, we fell to 
the old discourse of Paul's School; and he did, 
upon my declaring my value of it, give me one of 
Lilly's grammars, which I shall much set by. This 
night my wife had a new suit of flowered ash-coloured 
silk, very noble. 

Pepys, Diary. 



PLAGUE NOTES IN PEPYS 

April 30/A, 1665 (Lord's Day). Great fears of the 
sickness here in the City, it being said that two or 
three houses are already shut up. God preserve 
us all! 



ii2 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

May 24th. To the Coffee-house, where all the news 
is of the Dutch being gone out, and of the plague 
growing upon us in this town; and of remedies 
against it : some saying one thing, and some another. 

June yth. The hottest day that ever I felt in my 
life. This day, much against my will, I did in Drury 
Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross 
upon the doors, and " Lord have mercy upon us! " 
writ there; which was a sad sight to me, being the 
first of the kind, that, to my remembrance, I ever 
saw. It put me into an ill-conception of myself, so 
that I was forced to buy some roll-tobacco to smell 
and chew, which took away the apprehension. 

June 10th. In the evening home to supper; and 
there, to my great trouble, hear that the plague is 
come into the City; but where should it begin but 
in my good friend and neighbour's, Dr. Burnett, in 
Fenchurch Street; which, in both points, troubles 
me mightily. 

xyth. It struck me very deep this afternoon going 
with a hackney coach from Lord Treasurer's down 
Holborn, the coachman I found to drive easily and 
easily, at last stood still, and come down hardly 
able to stand, and told me that he was suddenly 
struck very sick, and almost blind — he could not 
see; so I 'light, and went into another coach, with 
a sad heart for the poor man and for myself also, 
lest he should have been struck with the plague. 

21st. I find all the town almost going out of town, 
the coaches and waggons being all full of people 
going into the country. 



PLAGUE NOTES IN PEPYS 113 

26th. The plague increases mightily, I this day 
seeing a house, at a bitt-maker's, over against St. 
Clement's Church, in the open street, shut up; which 
is a sad sight. 

28th. In my way to Westminster Hall, I observed 
several plague-houses in King's Street, and near the 
Palace. 

29th. By water to White Hall, where the Court 
full of waggons and people ready to go out of town. 
This end of the town every day grows very bad of 
the plague. The Mortality Bill is come to 267; which 
is about ninety more than the last; and of these 
but four in the City, which is a great blessing to us. 

July $th. By water to Woolwich, where I found 
my wife come, and her two maids, and very prettily 
accommodated they will be; and I left them going 
to supper, grieved in my heart to part with my wife, 
being worse by much without her, though some 
trouble there is in having the care of a family at 
home this plague time. 

18th. To the 'Change, where a little business, 
and a very thin exchange; and so walked through 
London to the Temple, where I took water for 
Westminster to the Duke of Albemarle, to wait on 
him, and so to Westminster Hall, and there paid 
for my newsbooks, and did give Mrs. Michell, who 
is going out of town because of the sickness, a pint 
of wine. I was much troubled this day to hear, at 
Westminster, how the officers do bury the dead in 
the open Tuttle Fields, pretending want of room 
elsewhere. 



ii 4 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

22nd. I by coach home, not meeting with but 
two coaches and but two carts from White Hall to 
my own house, that I could observe, and the streets 
mighty thin of people. I met this noon with Dr. 
Burnett, who told me, and I find in the newsbook 
this week that he posted upon the 'Change, that 
whoever did spread the report that, instead of dying 
of the plague, his servant was by him killed, it was 
forgery, and showed me the acknowledgment of the 
Master of the pest-house, that his servant died of a 
bubo on his right groin, and two spots on his right 
thigh, which is the plague. 

28/A. But, Lord ! to see in what fear all the people 
here (in Dagenham) do live. How they are afraid 
of us that come to them, insomuch that I am troubled 
at it, and wish myself away. 

August yd. All the way (to Dagenham) people, 
citizens, walking to and fro, inquire how the plague 
is in the City this week by the Bill ; which, by chance, 
at Greenwich, I had heard was 2,020 of the plague, 
and 3,000 and odd of all diseases; but methought 
it was a sad question to be so often asked me. 

10^. By and by to the office where we sat all 
morning; in great trouble to see the Bill this week 
rise so high, to above 4,000 in all, and of them 3,000 
of the plague. Home, to draw over anew my will, 
which I had bound myself by oath to dispatch by 
to-morrow night; the town growing so unhealthy, 
that a man cannot depend upon living two days. 

13th (Lord's Day). It being very wet all day clear- 
ing all matters, and giving instructions in writing 



PLAGUE NOTES IN PEPYS 115 

to my executors, thereby perfecting the whole 
business of my will, to my very great joy; so that I 
shall be in much better state of soul, I hope, if it 
should please the Lord to call me away this sickly 
time. I find myself worth, besides Brampton estates, 
the sum of £2,164, f° r which the Lord be praised! 

15^. It was dark before I could get home, and 
so land at Churchyard stairs, where, to my great 
trouble, I met a dead corpse of the plague, in the 
narrow alley, just bringing down a little pair of 
stairs. But I thank God I was not much disturbed 
at it. However, I shall beware of being late abroad 
again. 

16th. To the Exchange, where I have not been 
a great while. But, Lord! how sad a sight it is to 
see the streets empty of people, and very few upon 
the 'Change. Jealous of every door that one sees 
shut up, lest it should be the plague, and about us 
two shops in three, if not more, generally shut up. 

20th. After church, to my inn, and eat and drank, 
and so about seven o'clock by water, and got, between 
nine and ten, to Queenhithe, very dark; and I could 
not get my waterman to go elsewhere, for fear of the 
plague. Thence with a lanthorn, in great fear of 
meeting dead corpses, carrying to be buried; but, 
blessed be God ! met none, but did see now and then 
a link, which is the mark of them, at a distance. 

30th. I went forth, and went towards Moorfields 
to see, God forgive my presumption! whether I 
could see any dead corpse going to the grave, but, 
as God would have it, did not. But, Lord! how 



n6 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

everybody's looks, and discourse in the street, is of 
death, and nothing else; and few people going up 
and down, that the town is like a place distressed 
and forsaken. 

31s/. Every day sadder and sadder news of its 
increase. In the City died this week 7,496, and of 
them 6,102 of the plague. But it is feared that the 
true number of the dead this week is near 10,000; 
partly from the poor that cannot be taken notice 
of, and partly from the Quakers and others that 
will not have any bell ring for them. 

September 6th. To London, to pack up more 
things; and there I saw fires burning in the street, 
as it is through the whole City, by the Lord Mayor's 
order. Thence by water to the Duke of Albemarle's ; 
all the way fires on each side of the Thames, and 
strange to see in broad daylight two or three burials 
upon the bankside, one at the very heels of the other : 
doubtless, all of the plague, and yet at least forty or 
fifty people going along with every one of them. 

14th. I spent some thoughts upon the occurrences 
of this day, giving matter for as much content on 
one hand, and melancholy on the other, as any day 
in all my life. For the first ; the finding of my money 
and plate, and all safe at London, and speeding in 
my business this day. . . . 

Then, on the other side, my finding that though 
the Bill in general is abated, yet the City, within 
the walls, is increased, and likely to continue so, and 
is close to our house there. My meeting dead corpses 
of the plague, carried to be buried close to me at 



PLAGUE NOTES IN PEPYS 117 

noon-day through the City in Fenchurch Street. 
To see a person sick of the sores carried close by me 
by Gracechurch in a hackney-coach. My finding 
the Angel Tavern, at the lower end of Tower Hill, 
shut up; and more than that, the ale-house at the 
Tower Stairs; and more than that, that the person 
was then dying of the plague, when I was last there, 
a little while ago, at night. To hear that poor Payne, 
my waiter, hath buried a child, and is dying himself. 
To hear that a labourer I sent but the other day to 
Dagenham, to know how they did there, is dead of 
the plague; and that one of my own watermen, 
that carried me daily, fell sick as soon as he had 
landed me on Friday morning last, when I had been 
all night upon the water, and I believe that he did 
get his infection that day at Branford, and is now 
dead of the plague. To hear that Captain Lambert 
and Cuttle are killed in the taking these ships; and 
that Mr. Sidney Montagu is sick of a desperate fever 
at my Lady Carteret's at Scott's Hall. To hear that 
Mr. Lewes hath another daughter sick, and, lastly, 
that both my servants, W. Hewer, and Tom Edwards, 
have lost their fathers, both in St. Sepulchre's parish, 
of the plague this week, do put me into great appre- 
hensions of melancholy, and with good reason. 

But I put off my thoughts of sadness as much as 
I can, and the rather to keep my wife in good heart, 
and family also. 

October 16th. I walked to the Tower; but, Lord! 
how empty the streets are, and melancholy, so many 
poor, sick people in the streets full of sores; and so 



n8 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

many sad stories overheard as I walk, everybody 
talking of this dead, and that man sick, and so many 
in this place, and so many in that. And they tell 
me that, in Westminster, there is never a physician, 
and but one apothecary left, all being dead; but 
that there are great hopes of a great decrease this 
week; God send it! 

November 15th. The plague, blessed be God! is 
decreased 400; making the whole this week about 
1,300 and odd; for which the Lord be praised! 

22nd. I was very glad to hear that the plague is 
come very low; that is, the whole under 1,000, and 
the plague 600 and odd ; and great hopes of a further 
decrease, because of this day's being a very exceeding 
hard frost, and continues freezing. 

Pepys, Diary. 



EVELYN'S NOTES ON THE FIRE 

September 2nd, 1666. This fatal night, about ten, 
began the deplorable fire, near Fish Street, in London. 
yd. I had public prayers at home. The fire con- 
tinuing, after dinner, I took coach with my wife 
and son, and went to the Bankside in Southwark, 
where we beheld that dismal spectacle, the whole 
city in dreadful flames near the waterside; all the 
houses from the Bridge, all Thames Street, and 
upwards towards Cheapside, down to the Three 
Cranes, were now consumed; and so returned, ex- 
ceeding astonished what would become of the rest. 



EVELYN'S NOTES ON THE FIRE 119 

The fire having continued all this night (if I may 
call that night which was light as day for ten miles 
round about after a dreadful manner), when con- 
spiring with a fierce eastern wind in a very dry 
season, I went on foot to the same place; and saw 
the whole south part of the City burning from 
Cheapside to the Thames, and all along Cornhill 
(for it likewise kindled back against the wind as 
well as forward), Tower Street, Fenchurch Street, 
Gracious Street, and so along to Baynard's Castle, 
and was now taking hold of St. Paul's Church, to 
which the scaffolds contributed exceedingly. 

The conflagration was so universal, and the people 
so astonished, that, from the beginning, I know not 
by what despondency, or fate, they hardly stirred 
to quench it; so that there was nothing heard, or 
seen, but crying out and lamentation, running about 
like distracted creatures without at all attempting 
to save even their goods ; such a strange consternation 
there was upon them, so as it burned, both in breadth 
and length, the churches, public halls, Exchange, 
hospitals, monuments, and ornaments; leaping after 
a prodigious manner, from house to house, and 
street to street, at great distances one from the 
other. For the heat, with a long set of fair and 
warm weather, had even ignited the air, and pre- 
pared the materials to conceive the fire, which 
devoured, after an incredible manner, houses, furni- 
ture, and everything. 

Here, we saw the Thames covered with goods 
floating, all the barges and boats laden with what 



120 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

some had time and courage to save, as, on the other 
side, the carts, etc., carrying out to the fields which 
for many miles were strewed with movables of all 
sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and 
what goods they could get away. 

Oh, the miserable and calamitous spectacle! such 
as haply the world had not seen since the foundation 
of it, nor can be outdone till the universal con 
flagration thereof. 

All the sky was of a fiery aspect, like the top ot a 
burning oven, and the light seen above forty miles 
round-about for many nights. God grant mine eyes 
may never behold the like, who now saw above ten 
thousand houses all in one flame! 

The noise and crackling and thunder of the im- 
petuous flames, the shrieking of women and children, 
the hurry of people, the fall of towers, houses, and 
churches, was like a hideous storm; and the air all 
about so hot and inflamed, that at the last one was 
not able to approach it, so that they were forced to 
stand still, and let the flames burn on, which they 
did, for near two miles in length and one in breadth. 
The clouds also of smoke were dismal, and reached, 
upon computation, near fifty miles in length. 

Thus I left it this afternoon burning, a resemblance 
of Sodom, or the last day. It forcibly called to my 
mind that passage — non enim hie habemus stabilem 
civitatem\ the ruins resembling the picture of Troy. 
London was, but is no more! Thus, I returned. 

4th. The burning still rages, and it is now gotten 

Non enim . . . civitatem. Here we have no abiding city. 



EVELYN'S NOTES ON THE FIRE 121 

as far as the Inner Temple. All Fleet Street, the 
Old Bailey, Ludgate Hill, Warwick Lane, Newgate, 
Paul's Chain, Watling Street now flaming, and most 
of it reduced to ashes; the stones of Paul's flew like 
grenadoes, the melting lead running down the streets 
in a stream, and the very pavements glowing with 
fiery redness, so as no horse, nor man, was able to 
tread on them, and the demolition had stopped all 
the passages, so that no help could be applied. The 
eastern wind still more impetuously driving the flames 
forward, nothing but the Almighty power of God 
was able to stop them ; for vain was the help of man. 
$th. It crossed towards Whitehall; but oh! the 
confusion there was then at that Court. It pleased 
his Majesty to command me, among the rest, to 
look after the quenching of Fetter Lane end, to 
preserve (if possible) that part of Holborn, whilst 
the rest of the gentlemen took their several posts, 
some at one part, and some at another (for now 
they began to bestir themselves, and not till now, 
who hitherto had stood as men intoxicated, with 
their hands across), and began to consider that 
nothing was likely to put a stop but the blowing 
up of so many houses as might make a wider gap 
than any had yet been made by the ordinary method 
of pulling them down with engines. This some stout 
seamen proposed early enough to have saved near 
the whole City, but this some tenacious and avaricious 
men, aldermen, etc., would not permit, because 
their houses must have been of the first. It was, 
therefore, now commended to be practised; and my 



122 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

concern being particularly for the Hospital of St. 
Bartholomew, near Smithfield, where I had many 
wounded and sick men, made me the more diligent 
to promote it; nor was my care for the Savoy less. 

It now pleased God, by abating the wind, and by 
the industry of the people, when almost all was lost 
infusing a new spirit into them, that the fury of it 
began sensibly to abate about noon, so as it came 
no farther than the Temple westward, nor than the 
entrance of Smithfield, north; but continued all 
this day and night so impetuous towards Cripplegate 
and the Tower, as made us all despair. 

It also brake out again in the Temple; but the 
courage of the multitude persisting, and many 
houses being blown up, such gaps and desolations 
were soon made, as, with the former three days' 
consumption, the backfire did not so vehemently 
urge upon the rest as formerly. There was yet no 
standing near the burning and glowing ruins by near 
a furlong's space. 

The coal and wood-wharves, and magazines of 
oil, rosin, etc., did infinite mischief, so as the in- 
vective which a little before I had dedicated to his 
Majesty and published, giving warning what probably 
might be the issue of suffering those shops to be in 
the City, was looked upon as a prophecy. 

The poor inhabitants were dispersed about St. 
George's Fields, and Moorfields, as far as Highgate, 
and several miles in circle, some under tents, some 
under miserable huts and hovels, many without a 
rag, or any necessary utensils, bed or board, who 



EVELYN'S NOTES ON THE FIRE 123 

from delicateness, riches, and easy accommodations 
in stately and well-furnished houses, were now reduced 
to extremest misery and poverty. 

In this calamitous condition, I returned with a 
sad heart to my house, blessing and adoring the 
distinguishing mercy of God to me and mine, who, 
in the midst of all this ruin, was like Lot, in my 
little Zoar, safe and sound. 

yth. I went this morning on foot from Whitehall 
as far as London Bridge, through the late Fleet 
Street, Ludgate Hill, by St. Paul's, Cheapside, 
Exchange, Bishopsgate, Aldersgate, and out to 
Moorfields, thence through Cornhill, etc., with extra- 
ordinary difficulty, clambering over heaps of yet 
smoking rubbish, and frequently mistaking where I 
was; the ground under my feet so hot, that it even 
burnt the soles of my shoes. 

In the meantime, his Majesty got to the Tower 
by water, to demolish the houses about the graff, 
which, being built entirely about it, had they taken 
fire and attacked the White Tower, where the maga- 
zine of powder lay, would undoubtedly not only 
have beaten down and destroyed all the bridge, but 
sunk and torn the vessels in the river, and rendered 
the demolition beyond all expression for several 
miles about the country. . . . 

The people, who now walked about the ruins, 
appeared like men in some dismal desert, or rather, 
in some great city laid waste by a cruel enemy; to 
which was added the stench that came from some poor 
creatures' bodies, beds, and other combustible goods. 



124 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

Sir Thomas Gresham's statue, though fallen from 
its niche in the Royal Exchange, remained entire, 
when all those of the kings since the Conquest were 
broken to pieces. Also the standard in Cornhill, 
and Queen Elizabeth's effigies, with some arms on 
Ludgate, continued with but little detriment, whilst 
the vast iron chains of the City streets, hinges, bars, 
and gates of prisons, were many of them melted 
and reduced to cinders by the vehement heat. 

Nor was I yet able to pass through any of the 
narrow streets, but kept the widest; the ground 
and air, smoke and fiery vapour, continued so 
intense, that my hair was almost singed, and my feet 
unsufferably surbated. The by-lanes and narrow 
streets were quite filled up with rubbish; nor could 
one have possibly known where he was, but by the 
ruins of some church, or hall, that had some remark- 
able tower, or pinnacle remaining. 

I then went towards Islington and Highgate, 
where one might have seen 200,000 people of all 
ranks and degrees dispersed, and lying along by 
their heaps of what they could save from the fire, 
deploring their loss; and, though ready to perish 
for hunger and destitution, yet not asking one penny 
for relief, which to me appeared a stranger sight 
than any I had yet beheld. His Majesty in Council 
indeed took all imaginable care for their relief by 
proclamation for the country to come in, and refresh 
them with provisions. 

Evelyn, Diary. 



THE GUNS (1667) 125 



FOX ON THE FIRE 

The people of London were forewarned of this fire; 
yet few laid it to heart, or believed it; but rather 
grew more wicked, and higher in pride. 

For a Friend was moved to come out of Hunting- 
donshire a little before the fire, to scatter his money, 
and turn his horse loose on the streets, to untie the 
knees of his trowsers, let his stockings fall down, 
and to unbutton his doublet, and tell the people, 
" so should they run up and down, scattering their 
money and their goods, half undressed, like mad 
people, as he was a sign unto them " ; and so they 
did, when the city was burning. 

Thus hath the Lord exercised his prophets and 
servants by his power, showed them signs of his 
judgments, and sent them to forewarn the people; 
but, instead of repenting, they have beaten and 
cruelly entreated some, and some they have im- 
prisoned. 

George Fox, Journal (1666). 



WITHIN SOUND OF THE GUNS (1667) 

It was that memorable day in the first summer of 
the late war, when our navy engaged the Dutch; 
a day, wherein the two most mighty and best ap- 
pointed fleets which any age had ever seen disputed 
the command of the greater half of the globe, the 



126 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

commerce of nations, and the riches of the universe ; 
while these vast floating bodies on either side moved 
against each other in parallel lines, and our country- 
men, under the happy command of his Royal High- 
ness, went breaking, little by little, into the line of 
the enemies; the noise of the cannon from both 
navies reached our ears about the city. 

So that all men being alarmed with it and in a 
dreadful suspense of the event which they knew was 
then deciding, every one went following the sound 
as his fancy led him; and leaving the town almost 
empty, some took towards the Park, some cross the 
river, others down it; all seeking the noise in the 
depth of silence. 

Amongst the rest it was the fortune of Eugenius, 
Crites, Lisideius, and Neander to be in company 
together ; three of them persons whom their wit and 
quality have made known to all the town, and whom 
I have chose to (refer to) under these borrowed 
names, that they may not suffer by so ill a relation 
as I am going to make of their discourse. . . . 

Taking then a barge, which a servant of Lisideius 
had provided for them, they made haste to shoot 
the bridge, and left behind them that great fall of 
waters which hindered them from hearing what they 
desired; after which, having disengaged themselves 
from many vessels which rode at anchor in the 
Thames, and almost blocked up the passage towards 
Greenwich, they ordered the watermen to let fall 
their oars more gently. 

Then, every one favouring his own curiosity with 



THE GUNS (1667) 127 

a strict silence, it was not long ere they perceived 
the air to break about them like the noise of distant 
thunder, or of swallows in a chimney; those little 
undulations of sound, though almost vanishing 
before they reached them, yet still seeming to retain 
somewhat of their first horror, which they had be- 
twixt the fleets. After they had attentively listened 
till such time as the sound by little and little went 
from them, Eugenius, lifting up his head and taking 
notice of it, was the first who congratulated to the 
rest that happy omen of our nation's victory, adding 
that we had but this to desire in confirmation of it, 
that we might hear no more of that noise which was 
now leaving the English coast. . . . 

Neander was pursuing this discourse so eagerly 
that Eugenius had called to him twice or thrice ere 
he took notice that the barge stood still, and that 
they were at the foot of Somerset Stairs, where they 
had appointed to land. The company were all sorry 
to separate so soon, though a great part of the evening 
was already spent; and stood awhile looking back 
on the water, which the moonbeams played upon, 
and made it appear like floating quicksilver ; at 
last they went up through a crowd of French people 
who were merrily dancing in the open air, and nothing 
concerned for the noise of guns which had alarmed 
the town that afternoon. 

Dryden, Essay of Dramatic Poesy. 

Note. — The company referred to comprised Sir Charles 
Sedley, Sir Robert Howard, the Earl of Dorset, and Dryden, 
who here names himself Neander. 



128 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

COLONEL BLOOD STEALS THE 
CROWN JEWELS 

This liberty of access to the Jewel Office suggested 
to one Blood, a disbanded officer of Cromwell's 
army, the possibility of carrying off the Crown and 
other valuables. 

Having dressed up a woman of decent and quiet 
appearance to represent his wife, Blood attired 
himself as a clergyman, with cloak and cassock, 
according to the fashion of the time, and took her 
to the Tower, where they asked permission to see 
the Jewels. 

While Mr. Talbot Edwards, the Deputy-Keeper, 
was showing them, the lady pretended sudden 
sickness, and Mrs. Edwards kindly asked her into 
their apartments, where she gave her some cordial 
which appeared to restore her; and with many 
thanks, the pretended clergyman and his wife took 
their leave, but not before Blood had availed himself 
of the occasion to take a careful view of the localities, 
and to form his plan for the robbery. 

A few days after this he called with a present of 
gloves from his supposed wife to Mrs. Edwards, in 
return for her hospitality, telling her that his wife 
could talk of nothing but the kindness of " those 
good people at the Tower," and had desired him to 
mention, that they had a ward (a nephew) with a 
comfortable little estate in the country, and if such 
a match for their daughter would be agreeable to 



BLOOD STEALS THE JEWELS 129 

the Edwardses, they would with pleasure do their 
endeavour to forward it. 

Highly gratified by this plausible offer, the 
Edwardses invited Blood to dine with them that 
day, when he had the impudence to say a very long 
grace, with great appearance of fervour, concluding 
with a prayer for the King and Royal family. 

Noticing a pair of handsome pistols hanging 
against the wall of the parlour, he remarked that 
he should much like to buy them, if Mr. Edwards 
did not object to part with them, for a young friend 
in the army (his real object being to remove any 
defensive weapons from the house). 

He took his leave with a solemn benediction, and 
named a day for bringing his nephew to be intro- 
duced to Miss Edwards, requesting to be allowed to 
bring two country friends at the same time, to see 
the Jewels, before they returned to their homes. 

On the morning appointed, May 9, 1671, he 
arrived with three respectably dressed men, and as 
Mrs. Edwards and her daughter had not yet come 
downstairs, he asked Edwards to show his friends 
the Crown Jewels in the meantime. 

No sooner was this wish complied with, than they 
threw one of their cloaks over the old man's head, 
gagged him with a wooden plug with a breathing 
hole, and tied it tight with a string at the back of 
his neck. 

They then said they must have the Crown, Globe, 
and Sceptre, which if he quietly surrendered, but 
not else, they would spare his life. 



130 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

Poor Edwards, though eighty years old, instead 
of submitting to their conditions, made desperate 
struggles to get free and give the alarm, on which 
the villains gave him repeated blows on the head 
with a wooden mallet, and also stabbed him in the 
body, to silence his attempted cries. 

Blood now seized the Crown, one accomplice 
(Parrott) secreted the Globe, and the other pro- 
ceeded, with a file they had brought for the purpose, 
to divide the Sceptre into two parts for easier 
concealment, but at this moment the third man, 
whom they had left on the watch at the door below, 
gave an alarm, and in another moment Edwards's 
son, who, by a most fortunate chance, had just 
arrived from Flanders with Captain Beckman, his 
brother-in-law, hastened upstairs to salute his family. 

The villains made a rush past him, and, leaving 
the half -cut Sceptre behind them, escaped with the 
Globe and Crown, pursued by young Edwards and 
Beckman, shouting to stop the thieves. 

A warder at the drawbridge leading to the wharf, 
attempted to arrest their progress, but Blood firing 
a pistol in his face, he was so frightened, though 
the shot missed him, that he fell as if killed, and 
they got clear away by the wharf, and through the 
Iron Gate to St. Katherine's. 

At a place near this gate, they had appointed 
horses to meet them, and had nearly gained the 
spot, when Beckman, who was a fast runner, over- 
took them, and though Blood fired another pistol 
at him, rushed upon him, and seized him, when 



MORNING IN ST. JAMES'S PARK 131 

young Edwards coming up, he was overpowered, 
after a hard struggle, and brought back prisoner into 
the Tower. 

In this scuffle, the Crown, which Blood kept under 
his cloak, was knocked out of his grasp on the pave- 
ment, and a pearl and large diamond, with some 
stones of less value, were displaced; but they were 
nearly all picked up afterwards and restored. 

Parrott, who had, like his leader, been an officer 
in the Parliament's army, was captured as well as 
two or three others who were waiting with the 
horses near St. Katherine's. . . . 

At the termination of the examination, Blood and 
his accomplices were remanded to the Tower, but 
after a short imprisonment, were, to the astonish- 
ment of all, released without a trial. . . . 

The strangest part of this affair was, that Blood 
became a sort of hanger-on upon the Court at White- 
hall, and eventually a pension given him, besides 
some confiscated land in Ireland. 

Lord de Ros, Tower of London. 



A MORNING SCENE IN ST. JAMES'S PARK 

It was still early in the morning, and the Mall was 
untenanted, save by a few walkers, who frequented 
these shades for the wholesome purposes of air and 
exercise. Splendour, gaiety, and display, did not 
come forth, at that period, until noon was ap- 
proaching. 



132 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

All readers have heard that the whole space where 
the Horse Guards are now built, made, in the time 
of Charles II., a part of St. James's Park; and that 
the old building, now called the Treasury, was a 
part of the ancient Palace of Whitehall, which was 
thus immediately connected with the Park. 

The canal had been constructed, by the celebrated 
Le Notre, for the purpose of draining the Park; 
and it communicated with the Thames by a decoy, 
stocked with a quantity of the rarer waterfowl. 

It was towards this decoy that Fenella bent her 
way with unabated speed ; and they were approaching 
a group of two or three gentlemen, who sauntered 
by its banks, when, on looking closely at him who 
appeared to be the chief of the party, Julian felt 
his heart beat uncommonly thick, as if conscious of 
approaching some one of the highest consequence. 

The person whom he looked upon was past the 
middle age of life, of a dark complexion, corres- 
ponding with the long, black, full-bottomed periwig, 
which he wore instead of his own hair. His dress 
was plain black velvet, with a diamond star, how- 
ever, on his cloak, which hung carelessly over one 
shoulder. His features, strongly lined, even to 
harshness, had yet an expression of dignified good- 
humour; he was well and strongly built, walked 
upright and yet easily, and had upon the whole the 
air of a person of the highest consideration. He 
kept rather in advance of his companions, but turned 
and spoke to them, from time to time, with much 
affability, and probably with some liveliness, judging 



MORNING IN ST. JAMES'S PARK 133 

by the smiles, and sometimes the scarce restrained 
laughter, by which some of his sallies were received 
by his attendants. 

They also wore only morning dresses; but their 
looks and manner were those of men of rank, in 
presence of one in station still more elevated. They 
shared the attention of their principal in common 
with seven or eight little black curly-haired spaniels, 
or rather, as they are now called, cockers, which 
attended their master as closely, and perhaps with 
as deep sentiments of attachment, as the bipeds of 
the group; and whose gambols, which seemed to 
afford him much amusement, he sometimes checked, 
and sometimes encouraged. 

In addition to this pastime, a lackey, or groom, 
was also in attendance, with one or two little baskets 
and bags, from which the gentleman we have des- 
cribed took, from time to time, a handful of seeds, 
and amused himself with throwing them to the 
waterfowl. 

This, the King's favourite occupation, together 
with his remarkable countenance, and the deport- 
ment of the rest of the company towards him, satisfied 
Julian Peveril that he was approaching, perhaps 
indecorously, near to the person of Charles Stewart, 
the second of that unhappy name. 

While he hesitated to follow his dumb guide any 
nearer, and felt the embarrassment of being unable 
to communicate to her his repugnance to further 
intrusion, a person in the royal retinue touched a 
light and lively air on the flageolet, at a signal from 



134 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

the King, who desired to have some tune repeated 
which had struck him in the theatre on the preceding 
evening. 

While the good-natured monarch marked time 
with his foot, and with the motion of his hand, 
Fenella continued to approach him, and threw into 
her manner the appearance of one who was attracted, 
as it were in spite of herself, by the sounds of the 
instrument. 

Anxious to know how this was to end, and aston- 
ished to see the dumb girl imitate so accurately the 
manner of one who actually heard the musical notes, 
Peveril also drew near, though at somewhat greater 
distance. 

The King looked good-humouredly at both, as 
if he admitted their musical enthusiasm as an excuse 
for their intrusion; but his eyes became riveted on 
Fenella, whose face and appearance, although 
rather singular than beautiful, had something in 
them wild, fantastic, and, as being so, even capti- 
vating, to an eye which had been gratified perhaps 
to satiety with the ordinary forms of female beauty. 

She did not appear to notice how closely she was 
observed; but, as if acting under an irresistible 
impulse, derived from the sounds to which she 
seemed to listen, she undid the bodkin round which 
her long tresses were winded, and flinging them 
suddenly over her slender person, as if using them 
as a natural veil, she began to dance, with infinite 
grace and agility, to the tune which the flageolet 
played. 



MORNING IN ST. JAMES'S PARK 135 

Peveril lost almost his sense of the King's presence, 
when he observed with what wonderful grace and 
agility Fenella kept time to notes, which could only 
be known to her by the motions of the musician's 
fingers. He had heard, indeed, among other prodi- 
gies, of a person in Fenella' s unhappy situation 
acquiring, by some unaccountable and mysterious 
tact, the power of acting as an instrumental musi- 
cian, nay, becoming so accurate a performer as to 
be capable of leading a musical band; and he had 
also heard of deaf and dumb persons dancing with 
sufficient accuracy, by observing the motions of 
their partner. 

But Fenella's performance seemed more wonder- 
ful than either, since the musician was guided by 
his written notes, and the dancer by the motions of 
the others; whereas Fenella had no intimation, save 
what she seemed to gather, with infinite accuracy, 
by observing the motion of the artist's fingers on 
his small instrument. 

As for the King, who was ignorant of the particular 
circumstances which rendered Fenella's performance 
almost marvellous, he was contented, at her first 
commencement, to authorise what seemed to him 
the frolic of this singular-looking damsel, by a good- 
humoured smile, but when he perceived the exquisite 
truth and justice, as well as the wonderful combina- 
tion of grace and agility, with which she executed to 
his favourite air a dance which was perfectly new 
to him, Charles turned his mere acquiescence into 
something like enthusiastic applause. He bore time 



136 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

to her motions with the movement of his foot — 
applauded with head and with hand — and seemed, 
like herself, carried away by the enthusiasm of the 
gestic art. 

After a rapid yet graceful succession of entrechats, 
Fenella introduced a slow movement, which ter- 
minated the dance; then dropping a profound 
courtesy, she continued to stand motionless before 
the King, her arms folded on her bosom, her head 
stooped, and her eyes cast down, after the manner 
of an Oriental slave; while through the misty veil 
of her shadowy locks, it might be observed, that 
the colour which exercise had called to her cheeks 
was dying fast away, and resigning them to their 
native dusky hue. 

" By my honour," exclaimed the King, " she is 
like a fairy who trips it in moonlight. There must 
be more of air and fire than of earth in her com- 
position. It is well poor Nelly Gwyn saw her not, 
or she would have died of grief and envy. Come, 
gentlemen, which of you contrived this pretty piece 
of morning pastime? " 

Scott, Peveril of the Peak. 



CHARLES II. AND ST. JAMES'S PARK 

It was the custom of Charles II. to saunter almost 
daily into St. James's Park, where he took a great 
interest in the numerous birds with which it was 
stocked, and which it was his custom to feed with 



CHARLES II. AND ST. JAMES'S 137 

his own hand. The Government of Duck Island, at 
the east end of the piece of water, then a collection 
of ponds, was conferred on the famous St. Evremond. 
Pennant speaks of it as " the first and last govern- 
ment," but he is mistaken in the fact; it had pre- 
viously been bestowed on Sir John Flock, a person 
of good family, and a companion of Charles during 
his exile; it was probably conferred, in both in- 
stances, in a moment of convivial hilarity. 

On one occasion Coke, the author of the Memoirs, 
was in attendance on the King during one of his 
usual walks. Charles had finished feeding his favour- 
ites, and was proceeding towards St. James's, when, 
at the further end of the Mall, they were overtaken 
by Prince Rupert, who accompanied them to the 
palace. " The King," says Coke (who was near 
enough to overhear their conversation), " told the 
Prince how he had shot a duck, and such a dog 
fetched it; and so they walked on till the King 
came to St. James's House, and there the King said 
to the Prince, - Let's go and see Cambridge and 
Kendal,' the Duke of York's two sons, who then 
lay a-dying. But upon his return to Whitehall he 
found all in an uproar; the Countess of Castlemaine, 
as it was said, bewailing, above all others, that she 
should be the first torn to pieces." It appears that 
the astounding news of the Dutch fleet having entered 
the river had just been received at the palace. 

At another time, Charles had taken two or three 
turns in St. James's Park, and was proceeding up 
Constitution Hill, accompanied by the Duke of 



138 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

Leeds and Lord Cromarty, with the intention of 
walking in Hyde Park, when, just as they were 
crossing the road, they encountered the Duke of 
York, who had been hunting on Hounslow Heath, 
and was returning in his coach. The guards who 
attended the Duke, on perceiving the King, suddenly 
stopped, and consequently arrested the progress of 
the coach. James instantly alighted, and, after 
paying his respects to the King, expressed his un- 
easiness at seeing him with so little an attendance, 
and his fears that his life might be endangered. 
" No kind of danger, James," said the King; " for 
I am sure no man in England will take away my life 
to make you King." This story, says Dr. King in 
his Anecdotes of his Own Time, Lord Cromarty freely 
related to his friends. 

Jesse, Court of England. 



THE DEATH OF CHARLES II., AND THE 
PROCLAMATION OF JAMES II. (1685) 

I cannot pass by the melancholy course of life we 
had during that sickness. My brother was at court, 
and in council almost continually with a parcel of 
physicians about the regimen of the king in his 
sickness, and came home always heavy laden in his 
mind. He foresaw and knew the train of evils to 
come if the king did not recover, and it darkened 
his soul to a degree, that I verily believe his spirits 

Regimen. Diet. 



DEATH OF CHARLES. II. 139 

took an infection and were poisoned, though not 
immediately appearing. 

I had the company of my brother Dudley, than 
whom a braver soul there never was. We walked 
about like ghosts, generally to and from Whitehall. 
We met few persons without passion in their eyes, 
as we also had. We thought of no concerns, public 
or private, but were contented to live and breathe 
as if we had nought else to do but to expect the issue 
of this grand crisis. 

At last the king died, and then forthwith the 
succession was to be proclaimed, and when all were 
busy about preparing for that, we continued our 
sailing about Whitehall from place to place, without 
any conversation but our two selves, and at length 
we crossed up the banqueting-house stairs, got to 
the leads a-top, and there laid us down upon the 
battlements, I mean upon the flat stones over the 
balustres, expecting the proclamation, which then 
soon came out, being persons of quality and heralds 
mounted, who, after drums and trumpets, made the 
proclamation, the sergeants having performed the 
Oyes. And we two on the top of the balustres were the 
first that gave the shout, and the signal with our hats 
for the rest to shout, which was followed sufficiently. 
And here I had the reflection of the fable of the fly 
upon the wheel, we animalcules there fancying we 
raised all that noise which ascended from below. 

Roger North, Autobiography. 

Oyes. A call to attention. 
Animalcule. A very tiny creature. 



140 LONDON IN LITERATURE 



THE DOWNFALL OF JAMES II. 

James, while his fate was under discussion (at 
Windsor on December 17, 1688), remained at White- 
hall, fascinated, as it seemed, by the greatness and 
nearness of the danger, and unequal to the exertion 
of either struggling or flying. In the evening news 
came that the Dutch had occupied Chelsea and 
Kensington. The King, however, prepared to go 
to rest as usual. 

The Coldstream Guards were on duty at the 
palace. They were commanded by William, Earl of 
Craven, an aged man who, more than fifty years 
before, had been distinguished in war and love, who 
had led the forlorn hope at Creutznach with such 
courage that he had been patted on the shoulder 
by the great Gustavus, and who was believed to 
have won from a thousand rivals the heart of the 
unfortunate Queen of Bohemia. Craven was now 
in his eightieth year; but time had not tamed his 
spirit. 

It was past ten o'clock when he was informed 
that three battalions of the Prince's (of Orange) 
foot, mingled with some troops of horse, were pouring 
down the long avenue of St. James's Park, with 
matches lighted, and in full readiness for action. 

Count Solmes, who commanded the foreigners, 
said that his orders were to take military possession 
of the posts round Whitehall, and exhorted Craven 
to retire peaceably. Craven swore that he would 



DOWNFALL OF JAMES II. 141 

rather be cut in pieces; but, when the King, who 
was undressing himself, learned what was passing, 
he forbade the stout old soldier to attempt a resist- 
ance which must have been ineffectual. By eleven 
the Coldstream Guards had withdrawn; and Dutch 
sentinels were pacing the rounds on every side of 
the palace. 

Some of the King's attendants asked whether he 
would venture to lie down surrounded by enemies. 
He answered that they could hardly use him worse 
than his own subjects had done, and, with the apathy 
of a man stupefied by disasters, went to bed and 
to sleep. 

Scarcely was the palace again quiet when it was 
again roused. A little after midnight the three 
Lords arrived from Windsor. Middleton was called 
up to receive them. They informed him that they 
were charged with an errand which did not admit 
of delay. The King was awakened from his first 
slumber; and they were ushered into his bed- 
chamber. 

They delivered into his hand the letter with which 
they had been entrusted, and informed him that 
the Prince would be at Westminster in a few hours, 
and that his Majesty would do well to set out for 
Ham before ten in the morning. 

Macaulay, History of England. 



142 LONDON IN LITERATURE 



WILLIAM AT ST. JAMES'S 

In defiance of the weather a great multitude assem- 
bled between Albemarle House and Saint James's 
Palace to greet the Prince (William of Orange). 
Every hat, every cane, was adorned with an orange 
riband. The bells were ringing all over London. 
Candles for an illumination were disposed in the 
windows. Faggots for bonfires were heaped up in 
the streets. William, however, who had no taste 
for crowds and shouting, took the road through the 
Park. Before nightfall he arrived at Saint James's 
in a light carriage, accompanied by Schomberg. In 
a short time all the rooms and staircases in the 
palace were thronged by those who came to pay 
their court. Such was the press, that men of the 
highest rank were unable to elbow their way into 
the presence chamber. 

While Westminster was in this state of excite- 
ment, the Common Council was preparing at Guild- 
hall an address of thanks and congratulation. The 
Lord Mayor was unable to preside. He had never 
held up his head since the Chancellor (Jeffreys) had 
been dragged into the justice room in the garb of a 
collier. But the Aldermen and the other officers 
of the corporation were in their places. 

On the following day the magistrates of the City 
went in state to pay their duty to their deliverer. 
Their gratitude was eloquently expressed by their 



WILLIAM AT ST. JAMES'S 143 

Recorder, Sir George Treby. Some princes of the 
House of Nassau, he said, had been the chief officers 
of a great republic. Others had worn the imperial 
crown. But the peculiar title of that illustrious line 
to the public veneration was this, that God had set 
it apart and consecrated it to the high office of 
defending truth and freedom against tyrants from 
generation to generation. 

On the same day all the prelates who were in town, 
Sancroft excepted, waited on the Prince in a body. 
Then came the clergy of London, the foremost men 
of their profession in knowledge, eloquence and 
influence, with their bishop at their head. With 
them were mingled some eminent dissenting ministers, 
whom Compton, much to his honour, treated with 
marked courtesy. A few months earlier, or a few 
months later, such courtesy would have been con- 
sidered by many Churchmen as treason to the Church. 
Even then it was but too plain to a discerning eye 
that the armistice to which the Protestant sects 
had been forced would not long outlast the danger 
from which it had sprung. About a hundred Non- 
conformist divines, resident in the capital, presented 
a separate address. They were introduced by Devon- 
shire, and were received with every mark of respect 
and kindness. The lawyers paid their homage, 
headed by Maynard, who, at ninety years of age, 
was as alert and clear-headed as when he stood up 
in Westminster Hall to accuse Strafford. 

" Mr. Sergeant," said the Prince, " you must 
have survived all the lawyers of your standing." 



144 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

" Yes, sir," said the old man, " and, but for your 
Highness, I should have survived the laws too." 

But, though the addresses were numerous and 
full of eulogy, though the acclamations were loud, 
though the illuminations were splendid, though 
Saint James's Palace was too small for the crowd 
of courtiers, though the theatres were every night, 
from the pit to the ceiling, one blaze of orange 
ribands, William felt that the difficulties of his 
enterprise were but beginning. He had pulled a 
government down. The far harder task of recon- 
struction was now to be performed. 

Macaulay, History of England. 

iSth December, 1688. All the world go to see the 
Prince at St. James's, where there is a great Court. 
There I saw him, and several of my acquaintance 
who came over with him. He is very stately, serious, 
and reserved. 

Evelyn, Diary. 



JUDGE JEFFREYS DISCOVERED AT 
WAPPING (1688) 

A scrivener who lived at Wapping, and whose 
trade it was to furnish seafaring men there with 
money at high interest, had some time before lent 
a sum on bottomry. The debtor applied to equity 

Bottomry. A contract by which money is borrowed on the 
security of a ship's cargo. 



JUDGE JEFFREYS AT WAPPING 145 

for relief against his own bond; and the case came 
before Jeffreys. 

The counsel for the borrower, having little else to 
say, said that the lender was a trimmer. 

The Chancellor instantly fired. " A trimmer! 
Where is he? Let me see him. I have heard of that 
kind of monster. What is it made like? " 

The unfortunate creditor was forced to stand 
forth. The Chancellor glared fiercely on him, stormed 
at him, and sent him away half dead with fright. 

" While I live," said the poor man, as he tottered 
out of the court, " I shall never forget that terrible 
countenance.' ' 

And now the day of retribution had arrived. 
The trimmer was walking through Wapping, when 
he saw a well-known face looking out of the window 
of an ale-house. He could not be deceived. The 
eyebrows, indeed, had been shaved away. The 
dress was that of a common sailor from Newcastle, 
and was black with coal-dust; but there was no 
mistaking the savage eye and mouth of Jeffreys. 

The alarm was given. In a moment the house 
was surrounded by hundreds of people shaking 
bludgeons and bellowing curses. The fugitive's 
fife was saved by a company of the trainbands; 
and he was carried before the Lord Mayor. 

The Mayor was a simple man who had passed 
his whole life in obscurity, and was bewildered by 
finding himself an important actor in a mighty 
revolution. The events of the last twenty-four 
hours, and the perilous state of the city which was 



146 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

under his charge, had disordered his mind and his 
body. When the great man, at whose frown, a few 
days before, the whole kingdom had trembled, was 
dragged into the justice room begrimed with ashes, 
half dead with fright, and followed by a raging 
multitude, the agitation of the unfortunate Mayor 
rose to the height. He fell into fits, was carried to 
his bed, whence he never rose. 

Meanwhile the throng without was constantly 
becoming more numerous and more savage. Jeffreys 
begged to be sent to prison. An order to that effect 
was procured from the lords who were sitting at 
Whitehall; and he was conveyed in a carriage to 
the Tower. 

Two regiments of militia were drawn out to escort 
him, and found the duty a difficult one. It was 
repeatedly necessary for them to form as if for the 
purpose of repelling a charge of cavalry, and to 
present a forest of pikes to the mob. 

The thousands who were disappointed of their 
revenge pursued the coach with howls of rage to 
the gate of the Tower, brandishing cudgels, and 
holding up halters full in the prisoner's view. The 
wretched man meantime was in convulsions of terror. 
He wrung his hands; he looked wildly out, some- 
times at one window, sometimes at the other, and 
was heard even above the tumult, crying, " Keep 
them off, gentlemen! For God's sake, keep them 
off!" 

At length, having suffered far more than the 
bitterness of death, he was safely lodged in the 



CONTROL OF STREET CRIES 147 

fortress where some of his most illustrious victims 
had passed their last days, and where his own life 
was destined to close in unspeakable ignominy and 
horror. 

Macaulay, History of England. 



A PROPOSAL FOR THE CONTROL OF 
STREET CRIES (1711) 

Sir, 

I am a man out of all business, and would willingly 
turn my head to. anything for an honest livelihood. 
I have invented several projects for raising many 
millions of money without burdening the subject, 
but I cannot get the Parliament to listen to me, 
who look upon me, forsooth, as a crank and pro- 
jector; so that, despairing to enrich either myself 
or my country by this public-spiritedness, I would 
make some proposals to you relating to a design 
which I have very much at heart, and which may 
procure me a handsome subsistence, if you will be 
pleased to recommend it to the cities of London 
and Westminster. 

The post I would aim at is to be comptroller- 
general of the London cries, which are at present 
under no manner of rules or discipline. I think I am 
pretty well qualified for this place, as being a man 
of very strong lungs, of great insight into all the 
branches of our British trades and manufactures, 
and of a competent skill in music. 



148 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

The cries of London may be divided into vocal 
and instrumental. As for the latter, they are at 
present under a very great disorder. A freeman of 
London has the privilege of disturbing a whole 
street for an hour together, with the twankling of 
a brass-kettle, or a frying-pan. The watchman's 
thump at midnight startles us in our beds as much 
as the breaking in of a thief. The sow-gelder's horn 
has indeed something musical in it; but this is 
seldom heard within the liberties. I would therefore 
propose that no instrument of this nature should 
be made use of, which I have not tuned and licensed, 
after having carefully examined in what manner 
it may affect the ears of her Majesty's liege subjects. 

Vocal cries are of a much larger extent, and indeed 
so full of incongruities and barbarisms, that we 
appear a distracted city to foreigners, who do not 
comprehend the meaning of such enormous outcries. 

Milk is generally sold in a note above E-la, and in 
sounds so exceedingly shrill, that it often sets our 
teeth on edge. The chimney-sweeper is confined to 
no certain pitch; he sometimes utters himself in 
the deepest bass, and sometimes in the sharpest 
treble; sometimes in the highest, and sometimes in 
the lowest note of the gamut. The same observation 
might be made on the retailers of small coal, not to 
mention broken glasses or brick-dust. In these, 
therefore, and the like cases, it should be my care to 
sweeten and mellow the voices of these itinerant 
tradesmen, before they make their appearance in 

Gamut. The musical scale. 



CONTROL OF STREET CRIES 149 

our streets; as also to accommodate their cries to 
their respective wares; and to take care in particular 
that those may not make the most noise who have 
the least to sell, which is very observable in the 
vendors of card-matches, to whom I cannot but 
apply that old proverb of " Much cry but little 
wool." 

Some of these last-mentioned musicians are so 
very loud in the sale of these trifling manufactures, 
that an honest splenetic gentleman of my acquaint- 
ance bargained with one of them never to come into 
the street where he lived; but what was the effect 
of this contract? Why, the whole tribe of card- 
match-makers which frequent that quarter, passed 
by his door the very next day, in hopes of being 
bought off after the same manner. 

It is another great imperfection in our London 
cries, that there is no just time nor measure observed 
in them. Our news should indeed be published in a 
very quick time, because it is a commodity that 
will not keep cold. It should not, however, be cried 
with the same precipitation as "Fire! " Yet this is 
generally the case. A bloody battle alarms the town 
from one end to another in an instant. Every motion 
of the French is published in so great a hurry that 
one would think the enemy were at our gates. This 
likewise I would take upon me to regulate in such 
a manner, that there should be some distinction made 
between the spreading of a victory, a march, or an 
encampment, a Dutch, a Portugal, or a Spanish 

Splenetic. Peevish. 



150 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

mail. Nor must I omit under this head those ex- 
cessive alarms with which several boisterous rustics 
infest our streets in turnip-season; and which are 
more inexcusable because these are wares which 
are in no danger of cooling upon their hands. 

There are others who affect a very slow time, and 
are, in my opinion, much more tunable than the 
former; the cooper in particular swells his last note 
in a hollow voice, that is not without its harmony; 
nor can I forbear being inspired with a most agree- 
able melancholy when I hear that sad and solemn 
air with which the public are very often asked if 
they have any chairs to mend ; your own memory 
may suggest to you many other lamentable ditties 
of the same nature, in which the music is wonderfully 
languishing and melodious. 

I am always pleased with that particular time of 
the year which is proper for the pickling of dill and 
cucumbers; but alas! this cry, like the song of the 
nightingale, is not heard above two months. It 
would therefore be worth while to consider whether 
the same air might not in some cases be adapted 
to other words. 

It might likewise deserve our most serious con- 
sideration, how far, in a well-regulated city, those 
humourists are to be tolerated, who, not contented 
with the traditional cries of their forefathers, have 
invented particular songs and tunes of their own; 
such as was, not many years since, the pastry-man, 
commonly known by the name of the Colly-Molly- 
Puff; and such as is at this day the vendor of powder 



CONTROL OF STREET CRIES 151 

and wash-balls, who, if I am rightly informed, goes 
under the name of Powder- Watt. 

I must not here omit one particular absurdity 
which runs through this whole vociferous generation, 
and which renders their cries very often not only 
incommodious, but altogether useless to the public; 
I mean that idle accomplishment which they all of 
them aim at of crying so as not to be understood. 
Whether or no they have learnt this from several 
of our affected singers I will not take upon me to 
say; but most certain it is that people know the 
wares they deal in rather by their tunes than their 
words; insomuch that I have sometimes seen a 
country boy run out to buy apples of a bellows- 
mender, and gingerbread from a grinder of knives 
and scissors. Nay, so strangely infatuated are some 
very eminent artists of this particular grace in a 
cry, that none but their acquaintances are able to 
guess at their profession. 

Forasmuch therefore as persons of this rank are 
seldom men of genius or capacity, I think it would 
be very proper that some man of good sense and 
sound judgment should preside over these public 
cries, who should permit none to lift up their voices 
in our streets that have not tunable throats, and are 
not only able to overcome the noise of the crowd, 
and the rattling of coaches, but also to vend their 
respective merchandise in apt phrases, and in the 
most distinct and agreeable sounds. I do there- 
fore humbly recommend myself as a person rightly 
qualified for this post; and if I meet with fitting 



152 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

encouragement, shall communicate some other pro- 
jects which I have by me, that may no less conduce 
to the emolument of the public. 
I am, Sir, etc., 

Ralph Crotchet. 

The Spectator, No. 251. 



ADDISON AT HOME 

Quitting the Guard-table one Sunday afternoon, 
when by chance Dick (Steele) had a sober fit upon 
him, he and his friend were making their way down 
Jermain Street, and Dick all of a sudden left his 
companion's arm, and ran after a gentleman who 
was poring over a folio volume at the book-shop 
near to St. James's Church. He was a fair, tall 
man, in a snuff-coloured suit, with a plain sword, 
very sober, and almost shabby in appearance — at 
least when compared to Captain Steele, who loved 
to adorn his jolly round person with the finest of 
clothes, and shone in scarlet and gold lace. The 
Captain rushed up, then, to the student of the book- 
stall, took him in his arms, hugged him, and would 
have kissed him — for Dick was always hugging and 
bussing his friends — but the other stepped back 
with a flush on his pale face, seeming to decline 
this public manifestation of Steele's regard. 

" My dearest Joe, where hast thou hidden thyself 
this age? " cries the Captain, still holding both his 



ADDISON AT HOME 153 

friend's hands; " I have been languishing for thee 
this fortnight." 

" A fortnight is not an age, Dick," says the other, 
very good-humouredly. (He had light blue eyes, 
extraordinary bright, and a face perfectly regular 
and handsome, like a tinted statue.) V And I have 
been hiding myself — where do you think? " 

"What! Not across the water, my dear Joe? " 
says Steele, with a look of great alarm ; " thou 
knowest I have always " 

" No," says his friend, interrupting him with a 
smile; "we are not come to such straits as that, 
Dick. I have been hiding, sir, at a place where 
people never think of finding you — at my own 
lodgings — whither I am going to smoke a pipe now 
and drink a glass of sack : will your honour come? " 

" Harry Esmond, come hither," cries out Dick. 
" Thou hast heard me talk over and over again of 
my dearest Joe, my guardian angel? " 

" Indeed," said Mr. Esmond, with a bow, "it is 
not from you only that I have learnt to admire Mr. 
Addison. We loved good poetry at Cambridge as 
well as at Oxford; and I have some of yours by 
heart, though I have put on a red coat. . . . ' O 
qui canoro blandius Orpheo vocale ducis carmen ' ; 
shall I go on, sir? " says Mr. Esmond, who, indeed, 
had read and loved the charming Latin poems of 
Mr. Addison, as every scholar of that time knew 
and admired them. 

" This is Captain Esmond, who was at Blenheim," 
says Steele. 



154 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

" Lieutenant Esmond," says the other, with a 
low bow, " at Mr. Addison's service." 

" I have heard of you," says Mr. Addison, with a 
smile; as, indeed, everybody about town had heard 
that unlucky story about Esmond's dowager aunt 
and the Duchess. 

" We were going to the ' George,' to take a bottle 
before the play," says Steele; " wilt thou be one, 
Joe? " 

Mr. Addison said his own lodgings were hard by, 
where he was still rich enough to give a good bottle 
of wine to his friends; and invited the two gentle- 
men to his apartment in the Haymarket, whither 
we accordingly went. 

" I shall get credit with my landlady," says he, 
with a smile, " when she sees two such fine gentle- 
men as you come up my stair." And he politely 
made his visitors welcome to his apartment, which 
was indeed but a shabby one, though no grandee 
of the land could receive his guests with a more 
perfect and courtly grace than this gentleman. A 
frugal dinner, consisting of a slice of meat and a 
penny loaf, was awaiting the owner of the lodging. 
" My wine is better than my meat," says Mr. Addison ; 
" my Lord Halifax sent me the Burgundy." And 
he set a bottle and glasses before his friends, and 
ate his simple dinner in a very few minutes, after 
which the three fell to, and began to drink. " You 
see," says Mr. Addison, pointing to the writing- 
table, whereon was a map of the action at Hoch- 
stedt, and several other gazettes and pamphlets 



SWIFT AT ST. JAMES'S 155 

relating to the battle, " that I, too, am busy about 
your affairs, Captain. I am engaged as a poetical 
gazetteer, to say truth, and am writing a poem on 
the campaign.' ' 

So Esmond, at the request of his host, told him 
what he knew about the famous battle, drew the 
river on the table aliquo mero, and with the aid of 
some bits of tobacco-pipe showed the advance of 
the left wing, where he had been engaged. 

Thackeray, Esmond. 



SWIFT AT ST. JAMES'S COFFEE-HOUSE 

Nor is it incumbent on us to reject all that even 
Sheridan tells us, upon the authority of Ambrose 
Philips, of Swift's so-called first appearance at the 
whig club. The mis-date and mis-place throw 
discredit over it; but what the old whig poet, to 
whom in his youth Swift had shown many kind- 
nesses for Addison's sake, related to the young 
Irish player must have had some substance of truth. 
He says that they had for several successive days 
observed a strange clergyman come into the coffee- 
house, who seemed utterly unacquainted with any 
of those who frequented it; and whose custom it 
was to lay his hat down on a table, and walk back- 
wards and forwards at a good pace for half an hour 
or an hour, without speaking to any mortal, or 
seeming in the least to attend to anything that was 



156 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

going forward there. He then used to take up his 
hat, pay his money at the bar, and walk away 
without opening his lips. The name he went by 
among them in consequence was " the mad parson." 

On one particular evening, as Mr. Addison and 
the rest were observing him, they saw him cast his 
eyes several times on a gentleman in boots, who 
seemed to be just come out of the country, and at 
last advanced as intending to address him. Eager 
to hear what their dumb mad parson had to say, 
they all quitted their seats to get near him. Swift 
went up to the country-gentleman, and in a very 
abrupt manner, without any previous salute, asked 
him, " Pray, sir, do you remember any good weather 
in the world? " 

The country-gentleman, after staring a little at 
the singularity of his manner, and the oddity of 
the question, answered, " Yes, sir, I thank God I 
remember a great deal of good weather in my time." 

" That is more," rejoined Swift, " than I can say. 
I never remember any weather that was not too 
hot, or too cold, too wet, or too dry; but, however 
God Almighty contrives it, at the end of the year 
'tis all very well." 

With which remark he took up his hat, and, 
without uttering a syllable more, or taking the least 
notice of any one, walked out of the coffee-house. 

It has something of the same turn, and not without 
the same philosophy as his own anecdote of " Will 
Seymour the general " fretting under the excessive 
heat, at which a friend remarking that it was such 



POPE AT HAMPTON COURT 157 

weather as pleased the Almighty. " Perhaps it may," 
replied the general, " but I'm sure it pleases nobody 
else " (as there was not the least necessity that it 
should). There is however as small probability that 
this was Addison's first knowledge of his great friend, 
or Swift's first introduction to Steele, as that the 
incident occurred in 1703. 

Forster, Life of Jonathan Swift. 



POPE STAYS AT HAMPTON COURT 

I went by water to Hampton Court, and met the 
Prince, with all his ladies, on horseback, coming 
from hunting. Mrs. Bellenden and Mrs. Lepell took 
me into protection, contrary to the laws against 
harbouring Papists, and gave me a dinner, with 
something I liked better, an opportunity of con- 
versation with Mrs. Howard. 

We all agreed that the life of a maid of honour was 
of all things the most miserable, and wished that 
all women who envied it had a specimen of it. To 
eat Westphalia ham of a morning, ride over hedges 
and ditches on borrowed hacks, come home in the 
heat of the day with a fever, and (what is worse a 
hundred times) with a red mark on the forehead 
from an uneasy hat — all this may qualify them to 
make excellent wives for hunters. As soon as they 
wipe off the heat of the day, they must simper an 
hour and catch cold in the Princess's apartment; 
from thence to dinner with what appetite they may; 



158 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

and after that till midnight, work, walk, or think 
which way they please. 

No lone house in Wales, with a mountain and 
rookery, is more contemplative than this Court. 
Miss Lepell walked with me three or four hours by 
moonlight, and we met no creature of any quality 
but the King, who gave audience to the Vice- 
Chambeiiain all alone under the garden-wall. 

Pope, Letters. 



HANDEL AND THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL 

The fourth revival (of the Messiah), which took 
place on the nth of April, 1750, having been 
extremely successful, he gave it once more on the 
1st of May following, for the benefit of the London 
Foundling Hospital, then in its infancy. 

Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of 
Exposed and Deserted Young Children, in 
Lamb's Conduit Fields, April 18, 1750. 

George Frederick Handel, Esq., having presented 
this Hospital with a very fine organ for the chapel 
thereof, and repeated his offer of assistance to promote 
this charity, on Tuesday, the first day of May, 1750, 
at twelve o'clock at noon, Mr. Handel will open the 
said organ, and the sacred oratorio called Messiah will 
be performed under his direction. Tickets for this 
performance are ready to be delivered by the Steward 
at the Hospital; at Batson's Coffee House, in Corn- 
hill; and White's Chocolate House, in St. James's 
Street, at half a guinea each. N.B. — There will be no 
collection. By order of the General Committee. 

Harman Verelst, Secretary. 



THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL 159 

. . . The concourse was so great on the 1st of 
May, that three days afterwards the General Adver- 
tiser for Friday, the 4th of May, 1750, published a 
new advertisement of the Foundling Hospital, 
dated on the 2nd: — "A computation was made of 
what number of persons the chapel of this Hospital 
would conveniently hold, and no greater number of 
tickets were delivered to hear the performance there 
on the 1st instant. But so many persons of dis- 
tinction coming unprovided with tickets, and 
pressing to pay for tickets, caused a greater number 
to be admitted than were expected; and some that 
had tickets, not finding room, went away. To prevent 
any disappointment to such persons, and for the 
further promotion of this charity, this is to give 
notice that George Frederick Handel, Esq., has 
generously offered that the sacred oratorio called 
Messiah shall be performed again under his direction, 
in the chapel of this Hospital, on Tuesday the 15th 
instant, at twelve of the clock at noon; and the 
tickets delivered out, and not brought in on the 
first instant, will then be received. The tickets will 
be delivered from Monday the 7th to the 14th, and 
not after." 

In the following year, Handel again caused his 
favourite work to be performed successively, on the 
1 8th of April and the 16th of May, for the benefit 
of the Hospital. On the 18th of April, 175 1, " the 
sum for the tickets delivered out, was above 600 
pounds." Less than a month afterwards, on the 
13th of May, the General Advertiser contained the 



160 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

following announcement : — " From the Foundling 
Hospital. — At the request of several persons of 
distinction, G. F. Handel, Esq., has been applied 
to for a repetition of the performance of the sacred 
oratorio called Messiah, which he having very 
charitably agreed to, this is to give notice that the 
said oratorio will be performed on Thursday, 16th 
instant, being Ascension Day, at 12 at noon pre- 
cisely. Nota. — The doors will be open at ten, and 
there will be no collection." 

On the 17th, the same journal gives the follow- 
ing account of the performance: — " Yesterday the 
oratorio of Messiah was performed at the Foundling 
Hospital to a very numerous and splendid audience, 
and a voluntary on the organ was played by Mr. 
Handel, which met with universal applause." So 
they applauded then in the chapel of the Foundling 
Hospital. The Gentleman's Magazine for May, 175 1, 
says : — " There were above five hundred coaches 
besides chairs, and the tickets amounted to above 
seven hundred guineas." 

Seeing that The Messiah was, as they say, in 
theatrical parlance, " a sure draw," Handel in a 
manner divided his property in it with the Hospital ; 
he gave that institution a copy of the score, and 
promised to come and conduct it every year for the 
benefit of the good work. This gift was the occasion 
of an episode in which may be perceived the choleric 
humour of the worthy donor. The administrators of the 
Hospital being desirous of investing his intentions 
with a legal form, prepared a petition to Parliament, 



THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL 161 

which terminated in the following manner: — "That 
in order to raise a further sum for the benefit 
of the said charity, George Frederick Handel, Esq., 
hath been charitably pleased to give to this cor- 
poration a composition of music, called ' The 
Oratorio of The Messiah,' composed by him; the 
said George Frederick Handel reserving to himself 
only the liberty of performing the same for his own 
benefit during his life: And whereas, the said bene- 
faction cannot be secured to the sole use of your 
petitioners except by the authority of Parliament, 
your petitioners therefore humbly pray that leave 
may be given to bring in a bill for the purposes 
aforesaid." When one of the governors waited upon 
the musician with this form of petition, he soon 
discovered that the Committee of the Hospital had 
built on a wrong foundation; for Handel, bursting 
into a rage, exclaimed — " Te Devil! for vat sal de 
Foundling put mein oratorio in de Parlement! — 
Te Devil! mein music sal not go to de Parlement." 
The petition went no further; but Handel did 
not the less fulfil the pious engagement which he 
had contracted. In 1752, on Thursday, the 9th 
of April, the number of tickets taken was 1,200, 
each ten and sixpence. In 1753, the Public Advertiser 
of the 2nd of May, announced: — "Yesterday, the 
sacred oratorio called Messiah was performed in 
the Chapel at the Foundling Hospital, under the 
direction of the inimitable composer thereof, George 
Frederick Handel, Esq., who, in the organ concerto, 
played himself a voluntary on the fine organ he gave 



162 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

to that chapel." The London Magazine of the month 
says that " there were above 800 coaches and chairs, 
and the tickets amounted to 925 guineas." 

Eleven performances of the same kind, between 
1750 and 1759, brought £6,955 to the Hospital. 
Handel conducted them all in person, although (it 
must not be forgotten) he became blind in 1753. 
This benefaction of the generous and charitable 
artist survived him for many years. Eight per- 
formances, conducted by J. C. Smith, between 1760 
and 1768, realised £1,332, and nine performances, 
conducted by John Stanley, from 1769 to 1777, 
realised £2,032; so that, altogether, The Messiah 
alone brought into the funds of the Foundling 
Hospital no less a sum than £10,299. 

Schoelcher, Life of Handel. 



SAMUEL RICHARDSON 
Author of " Pamela " 

(1689-1761) 

My first recollection of him was in his house in the 
centre of Salisbury Square, or Salisbury Court as 
it was then called ; and of being admitted as a play- 
ful child into his study, where I have often seen 
Dr. Young and others; and where I was generally 
caressed and rewarded with biscuits or bons-bons 
of some kind or another; and sometimes with books, 



SAMUEL RICHARDSON 163 

for which he, and some more of my friends, kindly 
encouraged a taste, even at that early age, which 
has adhered to me all my long life, and continues 
to be the solace of many a painful hour. 

I recollect that he used to drop in at my father's, 
for we lived nearly opposite, late in the evening to 
supper; when, as he would say, he had worked as 
long as his eyes and nerves would let him, and was 
come to relax with a little friendly and domestic 
chat. 

I even then used to creep to his knee and hang 
upon his words, for my whole family doted on him; 
and once, I recollect that at one of these evening 
visits, probably about the year 1753, I was standing 
by his knee when my mother's maid came to summon 
me to bed; upon which, being unwilling to part 
from him and manifesting some reluctance, he 
begged I might be permitted to stay a little longer; 
and, on my mother's objecting that the servant 
would be wanted to wait at supper (for, in those 
days of friendly intercourse and real hospitality, a 
decent maid-servant was the only attendant at his 
own and many creditable tables, where nevertheless, 
much company was received), Mr. Richardson said, 
" I am sure Miss P. is now so much a woman, that 
she does not want anyone to attend her to bed, but 
will conduct herself with so much propriety, and 
put out her own candle so carefully, that she may 
henceforward be indulged with remaining with us 
till supper is served." 

This hint, and the confidence it implied, had such 



164 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

a good effect upon me that I believe I never required 
the attendance of a servant afterwards while my 
mother lived; and by such sort of ingenious and 
gentle devices did he use to encourage and draw in 
young people to do what was right. 

I also well remember the happy days I spent at 
his house at North End ; sometimes with my mother, 
but often for weeks without her, domesticated as 
one of his own children. He used to pass the greatest 
part of the week in town; but when he came down, 
he used to like to have his family flock around him, 
when we all first asked and received his blessing, 
together with some small boon from his paternal 
kindness and attention, for he seldom met us 
empty-handed, and was by nature most generous 
and liberal. 

Mrs. Barbauld, Correspondence. 



FIELDING AT WAPPING 

Thursday, June 27, 1754. — Besides the disagree- 
able situation in which we then lay, in the confines 
of Wapping and Rotherhithe, tasting a delicious 
mixture of the air of both these sweet places, and 
enjoying the concord of sweet sounds of seamen, 
watermen, fish-women, oyster-women, and of all 
the vociferous inhabitants of both shores, compos- 
ing altogether a greater variety of harmony than 
Hogarth's imagination had brought together in that 



FIELDING AT WAPPING 165 

print of his, which is enough to make a man deaf 
to look at — I had a more urgent cause to press our 
departure, which was that the dropsy, for which 
I had undergone three tappings, seemed to threaten 
me with a fourth discharge before I should reach 
Lisbon, and when I should have nobody on board 
capable of performing the operation; but I was 
obliged to hearken to the voice of reason, if I may 
use the captain's own words, and to rest myself 
contented. 

Sunday, June 30. — Nothing worth notice passed 
till that morning, when my poor wife, after passing 
a night in the utmost torments of the toothache, 
resolved to have it drawn. I despatched therefore 
a servant into Wapping to bring in haste the best 
tooth-drawer he could find. He soon found out a 
female of great eminence in the art; but when he 
brought her to the boat, at the water-side, they were 
informed that the ship was gone ; for indeed she had 
set out a few minutes after his quitting her; nor 
did the pilot, who well knew the errand on which 
I had sent my servant, think fit to wait a moment 
for his return, or to give me any notice of his setting 
out, though I had very patiently attended the delays 
of the captain four days, after many solemn promises 
of weighing anchor every one of the three last. 

But of all the petty bashaws or turbulent tyrants 
I ever beheld, this sour-faced pilot was the worst 
tempered, for, during the time that he had the 
guidance of the ship, which was till we arrived in 
the Downs, he complied with no one's desires, nor 



166 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

did he give a civil word, nor indeed a civil look, to 
any on board. 

The tooth-drawer, who, as I said before, was one 
of great eminence among her neighbours, refused 
to follow the ship; so that my man made himself 
the best of his way, and with some difficulty came 
up with us before we got under full sail; for, after 
that, as we had both wind and tide with us, he would 
have found it impossible to overtake the ship till 
she was come to an anchor at Gravesend. 

The morning was fair and bright, and we had a 
passage thither, I think, as pleasant as can be con- 
ceived; for, take it with all its advantages, 
particularly the number of fine ships you are always 
sure of seeing by the way, there is nothing to equal 
it in all the rivers of the world. The yards of Dept- 
ford and of Woolwich are noble sights, and give us 
a just idea of the great perfection to which we are 
arrived in building those floating castles, and the 
figure which we may always make in Europe among 
the other maritime powers. That of Woolwich, at 
least, very strongly imprinted this idea on my mind ; 
for there was now on the stocks there the Royal 
Anne, supposed to be the largest ship ever built, 
and which contains ten carriage-guns more than 
had ever yet equipped a first-rate. . . . 

Besides the ships in the docks, we saw many on 
the water; the yachts are sights of great parade, 
and the king's body yacht is, I believe, unequalled 
in any country for convenience as well as magni- 
ficence; both which are consulted in building and 



FIELDING AT WAPPING 167 

equipping her with the most exquisite art and work- 
manship. 

We saw likewise several Indiamen just returned 
from their voyage. These are, I believe, the largest and 
finest vessels which are anywhere employed in com- 
mercial affairs. The colliers, likewise, which are very 
numerous, and even assemble in fleets, are ships of 
great bulk; and if we descend to those used in the 
American, African, and European trades, and pass 
through those which visit our own coasts, to the 
small craft that lie between Chatham and the Tower, 
the whole forms a most pleasing object to the eye, 
as well as highly warming the heart of an English- 
man who has any degree of love for his country, 
or can recognise any effect of the patriot in his 
constitution. 

Lastly, the Royal Hospital at Greenwich, which 
presents so delightful a front to the water, and doth 
such honour at once to its builder and the nation, 
to the great skill and ingenuity of the one, and to 
the no less sensible gratitude of the other, very 
properly closes the account of this scene ; which may 
well appear romantic to those who have not them- 
selves seen that, in this one instance, truth and 
reality are capable, perhaps, of exceeding the power 
of fiction. 

Fielding, Voyage to Lisbon. 



168 LONDON IN LITERATURE 



UNREHEARSED HUMOURS OF 
BARTHOLOMEW FAIR 

The next day, being Tuesday, they all went in Mr. 
Fenton's coach to Smithfield, where numbers of 
tents were set up, and several drolls and pantomimes, 
etc., prepared in imitation of the humours of Bartho- 
lomew Fair. The weather was fair and calm, and 
they let down all the glasses that they might see, 
without interruption, whatever was to be seen. 

Their coach stopped just opposite to an itinerant 
stage, where a genius, who comprised, within his 
single person, the two important functions of a 
tumbler and merry Andrew, by his successive action 
and oratory, extorted plaudits and huzzas from all 
the spectators. 

Among the rest a countryman, who rode upon a 
mule, sat gaping and grinning by intervals, in all 
the ecstatic rapture that can be ascribed to en- 
thusiasm. While his attention was thus rivetted, 
two knavish wags came, and, ungirthing his saddle, 
supported it on either hand, till a third of the 
fraternity led his mule away from under him, and 
a fourth came with a three-legged horse, such as 
housewives dry their linen on, and, having jammed 
it under the saddle, they all retreated in peace. 

The populace were so delighted at this humorous 
act of felony, that, instead of interrupting it, it only 
served to redouble their joys and clamours. Harry, 
too, greatly chuckled and laughed at the joke. But 



TURNER AND COVENT GARDEN 169 

when he saw the beast led off, and that the amazed 
proprietor, on stooping to take the bridle, had fallen 
precipitately to the ground, his heart twitched him 
with a kind of compunction, and, throwing himself 
out of the coach, he made all the speed that the 
press would admit, and, recovering the mule, brought 
it back to its owner. 

" Here, friend," said he, " here is your beast 
again; take care the next time that they do not 
steal your teeth." " Thank you, master," said the 
clown, " since you have been so honest as to give 
him to me back, I will never be the one to bring you 
to the 'sizes or sessions." 

" I am much obliged to your clemency," answered 
Harry; " but pray let me have the pleasure of seeing 
you safe mounted." 

So saying, he held the stirrup, while the booby 
got up, and said, " Well, my lad, very well, if we 
happen to meet at Croydon we may take a pot 
together." 

Henry Brooke, The Fool 0/ Quality (1766-70). 



TURNER AND COVENT GARDEN 

Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a 
square brick pit or well is formed by a close-set 
block of houses, to the back windows of which it 
admits a few rays of light. Access to the bottom of 
it is obtained out of Maiden Lane, through a low 



i 7 o LONDON IN LITERATURE 

archway and an iron gate; and if you stand long 
enough under the archway to accustom your eyes 
to the darkness, you may see on the left hand a 
narrow door, which formerly gave quiet access to a 
respectable barber's shop, of which the front window, 
looking into Maiden Lane, is still extant, filled, in 
this year (i860), with a row of bottles, connected, 
in some defunct manner, with a brewer's business. 
A more fashionable neighbourhood, it is said, eighty 
years ago than now — never, certainly, a cheerful 
one — wherein a boy being born on St. George's 
Day, 1775, began soon after to take interest in the 
world of Co vent Garden, and put to service such 
spectacles of life as it afforded. 

No knights to be seen there, nor, I imagine, many 
beautiful ladies; their costume at least disadvan- 
tageous, depending much on incumbency of hat 
and feather, and short waists; the majesty of men 
founded similarly on shoe-buckles and wigs; — 
impressive enough when Reynolds will do his best 
for it, but not suggestive of much ideal delight to 
a boy. 

" Bello ovile dov' io dormii agnello " ;. of things 
beautiful besides men and women, dusty sunbeams 
up or down the street on summer mornings; deep- 
furrowed cabbage-leaves at the greengrocer's ; magni- 
ficence of oranges in wheelbarrows round the corner; 
and Thames' shore within three minutes' race. 

None of these things very glorious; the best, 
however, that England, it seems, was then able to 
provide for a boy of gift; who, such as they are, 



TURNER AND COVENT GARDEN 171 

loves them — never, indeed, forgets them. The 
short waists modify to the last his visions of Greek 
ideal. His foregrounds had always a succulent 
cluster or two of greengrocery at the corners. En- 
chanted oranges gleam in Co vent Gardens of the 
Hesperides; and great ships go to pieces in order 
to scatter chests of them on the waves. That mist 
of early sunbeams in the London dawn crosses, 
many and many a time, the clearness of Italian air; 
and by Thames' shore, with its stranded barges and 
glidings of red sail, dearer to us than Lucerne lake 
or Venetian lagoon, — by Thames' shore we will die. 

With such circumstances round him in youth, let 
us note what necessary effects followed upon the boy. 
I assume him to have had Giorgione's sensibility 
(and more than Giorgione's, if that be possible) to 
colour and form. I tell you farther, and this fact 
you may receive trustfully, that his sensibility to 
human affection and distress was no less keen than 
even his sense for natural beauty — heart-sight deep 
as eye-sight. 

Consequently, he attaches himself with the faith- 
fullest child-love to everything that bears an image 
of the place he was born in. No matter how ugly 
it is, — has it anything about it like Maiden Lane, 
or like Thames' shore ? If so, it shall be painted for 
their sake. Hence, to the very close of life, Turner 
could endure uglinesses which no one else of the 

Hesperides. The sisters who, assisted by a dragon, guarded 
a wonderful garden containing a tree with golden apples. 

Giorgione. A famous Venetian painter, and fellow-pupil 
of Titian. 



172 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

same sensibility would have borne with for an 
instant. Dead brick walls, blank square windows, 
old clothes, market-womanly types of humanity 
— anything fishy or muddy like Billingsgate or 
Hungerford Market had great attractions for him; 
black barges, patched sails, and every possible 
condition of fog. 

You will find these tolerations and affections 
guiding or sustaining him till the last hour of his 
life; the notablest of all such endurances being 
that of dirt. No Venetian ever draws anything 
foul; but Turner devoted picture after picture to 
the illustration of effects of dinginess, smoke, soot, 
dust, and dusty texture; old sides of boats, weedy 
roadside vegetation, dung-hills, straw-yards, and all 
the soilings and stains of every common labour. 

And more than this, he not only could endure, 
but enjoyed and looked for litter, like Covent Garden 
wreck after the market. His pictures are often full 
of it, from side to side; their foregrounds differ 
from all others in the natural way the things have 
of lying about in them. Even his richest vegetation, 
in ideal work, is confused; and he delights in shingle, 
debris, and heaps of fallen stones. The last words 
he ever spoke to me about a picture were in gentle 
exultation about his St. Gothard: "That litter of 
stones which I endeavoured to represent." 

The second great result of this Covent Garden 
training was, understanding of and regard for the 
poor, whom the Venetians, we saw, despised ; whom, 
contrarily, Turner loved, and more than loved — 



THE GORDON RIOTS 173 

understood. He got no romantic sight of them, but 
an infallible one, as he prowled about the end of 
his lane, watching night effects in the wintry streets ; 
nor sight of the poor alone, but of the poor in direct 
relations with the rich. He knew, in good and evil, 
what both classes thought of, and how they dealt 
with, each other. 

Ruskin, Modern Painters. 



THE GORDON RIOTS 

On Tuesday evening (June, 1780), leaving Fielding's 
ruins, they went to Newgate to demand their com- 
panions who had been seized demolishing the chapel. 
The keeper could not release them, but by the 
Mayor's permission, which he went to ask; at his 
return he found all the prisoners released, and 
Newgate in a blaze. They then went to Bloomsbury, 
and fastened upon Lord Mansfield's house, which 
they pulled down; and as for his goods, they totally 
burnt them. They have since gone to Caen Wood, 
but a guard was there before them. They plundered 
some Papists, I think, and burnt a mass-house in 
Moorfields the same night. 

On Wednesday I walked with Dr. Scott to look 
at Newgate, and found it in ruins, with the fire yet 
glowing. As I went by, the Protestants were plun- 
dering the Sessions House at the Old Bailey. There 
were not, I believe, a hundred; but they did their 
work at leisure, in full security without sentinels, 



174 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

without trepidation, as men lawfully employed in 
full day. Such is the cowardice of a commercial 
place. On Wednesday they broke open the Fleet, 
and the King's Bench, and the Marshalsea, and 
Wood Street Compter, and Clerkenwell Bridewell, 
and released all the prisoners. 

At night they set fire to the Fleet, and to the 
King's Bench, and I know not how many other 
places; and one might see the glare of conflagration 
fill the sky from many parts. The sight was dreadful. 
Some people were threatened; Mr. Strahan advised 
me to take care of myself. Such a time of terror you 
have been happy in not seeing. 

Johnson, Letters to Mrs. Thrale. 
(Given in Boswell's Life.) 



MR. AKERMAN OF NEWGATE 

I should think myself very much to blame, did I 
here neglect to do justice to my esteemed friend, 
Mr. Akerman, the keeper of Newgate, who long 
discharged a very important trust with an uniform 
intrepid firmness, and at the same time a tenderness 
and a liberal charity, which entitled him to be 
recorded with distinguished honour. 

Upon this occasion, from the timidity and negli- 
gence of the magistracy on the one hand, and the 
almost incredible exertions of the mob on the other, 
the first prison of this great country was laid open, 
and the prisoners set free; but that Mr. Akerman, 



AKERMAN OF NEWGATE 175 

whose house was burnt, would have prevented all 
this, had proper aid been sent him in due time, there 
can be no doubt. 

Many years ago, a fire broke out in the brick part 
which was built as an addition to the old gaol of 
Newgate. The prisoners were in consternation and 
tumult, calling out, " We shall be burnt — we shall 
be burnt ! Down with the gate — down with the gate ! " 

Mr. Akerman hastened to them, showed himself 
at the gate, and having, after some confused voci- 
feration of " Hear him — hear him! " obtained a 
silent attention, he then calmly told them, that the 
gate must not go down; that they were under his 
care, and that they should not be permitted to escape ; 
but that he could assure them, they need not be 
afraid of being burnt, for that the fire was not in 
the prison, properly so called, which was strongly 
built with stone, and that if they would engage to 
be quiet, he himself would come to them, and conduct 
them to the farther end of the building, and would 
not go out till they gave him leave. 

To this proposal they agreed; upon which Mr. 
Akerman, having first made them fall back from 
the gate, went in, and with a determined resolution 
ordered the outer turnkey upon no account to open 
the gate, even though the prisoners (though he 
trusted they would not) should break their word, 
and by force bring himself to order it. " Never 
mind me," said he, V should that happen." 

The prisoners peaceably followed him, while he 
conducted them through passages of which he had 



176 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

the keys, to the extremity of the gaol, which was 
most distant from the fire. Having by this very 
judicious conduct fully satisfied them that there 
was no immediate risk, if any at all, he then ad- 
dressed them thus: 

" Gentlemen, you are now convinced that I told 
you true. I have no doubt that the engines will 
soon extinguish this fire; if they should not a suffi- 
cient guard will come, and you shall all be taken 
out, and lodged in the Compters. I assure you, upon 
my word and honour, that I have not a farthing 
insured. I have left my house, that I might take 
care of you. I will keep my promise, and stay with 
you if you insist upon it ; but if you will allow me 
to go out, and look after my family and property, 
I shall be obliged to you." 

Struck with his behaviour, they called out, 
" Master Akerman, you have done bravely; it was 
very kind in you ; by all means go and take care of 
your own concerns." He did so accordingly, while 
they remained and were all preserved. 

Johnson had been heard to relate the substance 
of this story with high praise, in which he was joined 
by Mr. Burke. My illustrious friend, speaking of 
Mr. Akerman's kindness to his prisoners, pronounced 
this eulogy upon his character: — " He who has 
long had constantly in his view the worst of mankind 
and is yet eminent for the humanity of his dis- 
position, must have had it originally in a great 
degree, and continued to cultivate it very carefully." 

Boswell, Johnson. 



DR. JOHNSON 177 



DR. JOHNSON 

While the dictionary was going forward, Johnson 
lived part of the time in Holborn, part in Gough 
Square, Fleet Street; and he had an upper room 
fitted up like a counting-house for the purpose, in 
which he gave to the copyists their several tasks. 
The words, partly taken from other dictionaries, 
and partly supplied by himself, having been first 
written down with spaces left between them, he 
delivered in writing their etymologies, definitions, 
and various significations. The authorities were 
copied from the books themselves, in which he had 
marked the passages with a black lead-pencil, the 
traces of which could easily be effaced. I have seen 
several of them, in which that trouble had not been 
taken, so that they were just as when used by the 
copyists. It is remarkable that he was so attentive 
in the choice of the passages in which words were 
authorised, that one may read page after page of 
his dictionary with improvement and pleasure; 
and it should not pass unobserved, that he has 
quoted no author whose writings had a tendency 
to hurt sound religion and morality. 

The necessary expense of preparing a work of 
such magnitude for the press must have been a 
considerable deduction from the price stipulated 
to be paid for the copyright. I understand that 
nothing was allowed by the booksellers on that 
account; and I remember his telling me that a 



178 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

large portion of it having, by mistake, been written 
upon both sides of the paper, so as to be inconvenient 
for the compositor, it cost him twenty pounds to 
have it transcribed upon one side only. . . . 

" I received one morning a message from poor 
Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it 
was not in his power to come to me, begging that I 
would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a 
guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I 
accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and 
found that his landlady had arrested him for his 
rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I per- 
ceived that he had already changed my guinea, and 
had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before hiin. 
I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be 
calm, and began to talk to him of the means by 
which he might be extricated. He then told me 
that he had a novel ready for the press, which he 
produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merit ; 
told the landlady I should soon return ; and, having 
gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I 
brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged 
his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high 
tone for having used him so ill." . . . 

(This quotation is Johnson's own account of the 
visit to Goldsmith at Wine-office Court, and of his 
disposal of the Vicar of Wakefield.) 

He this autumn received a visit (at Bolt Court, 
Fleet Street) from the celebrated Mrs. Siddons. He 



DR. JOHNSON 179 

gives this account of it in one of his letters to Mrs. 
Thrale, October 27: 

" Mrs. Siddons, in her visit to me, behaved with 
great modesty and propriety, and left nothing behind 
her to be censured or despised. Neither praise nor 
money, the two powerful corruptors of mankind, 
seemed to have depraved her. I shall be glad to see 
her again. Her brother Kemble calls on me, and 
pleases me very well. Mrs. Siddons and I talked of 
plays; and she told me her intention of exhibiting 
this winter the characters of Constance, Catherine, 
and Isabella in .Shakespeare." 

Mr. Kemble has favoured me with the following 
minute of what passed at this visit : 

When Mrs. Siddons came into the room, there 
happened to be no chair ready for her, which he 
observing, said with a smile, " Madam, you who so 
often occasion a want of seats to other people, will 
the more easily excuse the want of one yourself." 

Having placed himself by her, he with great good 
humour entered upon a consideration of the English 
drama; and, among other inquiries, particularly 
asked her which of Shakespeare's characters she 
was most pleased with. Upon her answering that 
she thought the character of Queen Catherine in 
Henry VIII. the most natural: — " I think so, too, 
Madam," said he ; " and whenever you perform 
it I will once more hobble out to the theatre 
myself." Mrs. Siddons promised she would do 
herself the honour of acting his favourite part for 
him; but many circumstances happened to prevent 



x8o LONDON IN LITERATURE 

the representation of King Henry VIII. during the 
Doctor's life. 

In the course of the evening he thus gave his 
opinion upon the merits of some of the principal 
performers whom he remembered to have seen upon 
the stage. 

" Mrs. Porter in the vehemence of rage, and Mrs. 
Clive in the sprightliness of humour, I have never 
seen equalled. What Clive did best, she did better 
than Garrick; but could not do half so many things 
well ; she was a better romp than any I ever saw in 
nature. — Prit chard, in common life, was a vulgar 
idiot ; she would talk of her ' gownd ' ; but, when 
she appeared upon the stage, seemed to be inspired 
by gentility and understanding. — I once talked with 
Colley Cibber, and thought him ignorant of the 
principles of his art. — Garrick, Madam, was no de- 
claimer; there was not one of his own scene-shifters 
who could not have spoken To be, or not to be, better 
than he did; yet he was the only actor I ever saw, 
whom I could call a master both in tragedy and 
comedy ; though I liked him best in comedy. A true 
conception of character, and natural expression of 
it, were his distinguished excellencies." 

Having expatiated, with his usual force and elo- 
quence, on Mr. Garrick' s extraordinaty eminence 
as an actor, he concluded with this compliment to 
his social talents: " And after all, Madam, I thought 
him less to be envied on the stage than at the head 
of a table." 

Boswell, Johnson. 



REYNOLDS " AT HOME V 181 

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS "AT HOME" AT 
LEICESTER SQUARE 

" Well, Sir Joshua," said lawyer Dunning, on 
arriving at one of these parties, " and whom have 
you got to dine with you to-day? The last time I 
dined in your house the company was of such a sort 
that I believe all the rest of the world enjoyed peace 
for that afternoon." But though vehemence and 
disputation will at times usurp quieter enjoyments, 
when men of genius and strong character are as- 
sembled, the evidence that has survived of these 
celebrated meetings in no respect impairs their 
indestructible interest. They were the first great 
example that had been given to this country of a 
social intercourse between persons of distinguished 
pretensions of all kinds; poets, physicians, lawyers, 
deans, historians, actors, temporal and spiritual 
peers, House of Commons men, men of science, 
men of letters, painters, philosophers, and lovers of 
the arts; meeting on a ground of hearty ease, good 
humour, and pleasantry, which exalts my respect 
for the memory of Reynolds. 

It was no prim, fine table he set them down to. 
There was little order of arrangement; there was 
more abundance than elegance ; and a happy freedom 
thrust conventionalism aside. Often was the dinner- 
board, prepared for seven or eight, required to accom- 
modate itself to fifteen or sixteen; for often on the 
very eve of dinner, would Sir Joshua tempt afternoon 



182 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

visitors with intimation that Johnson, or Garrick, 
or Goldsmith was to dine there. Nor was the want 
of seats the only difficulty. A want of knives and 
forks, of plates and glasses, as often succeeded. 

In something of the same style, too, was the 
attendance; the kitchen had to keep pace with the 
visitors; and it was easy to know the guests well- 
acquainted with the house by their never failing to 
call instantly for beer, bread, or wine, that they 
might get them before the first course was over, 
and the worst confusion began. 

Once Sir Joshua was prevailed upon to furnish 
his table with dinner-glasses and decanters, and 
some saving of time they proved; yet as they were 
demolished in the course of service, he could never 
be persuaded to replace them. 

" But these trifling embarrassments," added Mr. 
Courtenay, describing them to Sir James Mackintosh, 
" only served to enhance the hilarity and singular 
pleasure of the entertainment." 

It was not the wine, dishes, and cookery, not the 
fish and venison, that were talked of or recommended ; 
those social hours, that irregular convivial talk, had 
matter of higher relish, and far more eagerly enjoyed. 
And amid all the animated bustle of his guests, the 
host sat perfectly composed; always attentive to 
what was said, never minding what was ate or drunk, 
and leaving everyone at perfect liberty to scramble 
for himself. Though so severe a deafness had resulted 
from cold caught on the Continent in early life as to 
compel the use of a trumpet, Reynolds profited by 



SOUTHEY AT WESTMINSTER 183 

its use to hear or not to hear, or as he pleased to 
enjoy the privileges of both, and keep his own 
equanimity undisturbed. 

"He is the same all the year round," exclaimed 
Johnson, with honest envy. " In illness and in pain 
he is still the same. Sir, he is the most invulnerable 
man I know: the man with whom, if you should 
quarrel, you will find the most difficulty how to 
abuse." 

Nor was this praise obtained by preference of 
any, but by cordial respect to all; for in Reynolds 
there was as little of the sycophant as the tyrant. 
However high the rank of the guests invited, he 
waited for none. His dinners were served always 
precisely at five o'clock. " His was not the fashion- 
able ill-breeding," said Mr. Courtenay, " which 
would wait an hour for two or three persons of 
title," and put the rest of the company out of humour 
by the invidious distinction. 

Forster, Life of Goldsmith. 



SOUTHEY AT WESTMINSTER SCHOOL 

The present Lord Amhurst was head of the house 
(1788), a mild inoffensive boy, who interfered with 
no one, and, having a room to himself (which no 
other boy had), lived very much to himself in it, 
liked and respected by everybody. 
Sycophant. A toady. 



184 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

I was quartered in the room with , who after- 
wards married that sweet creature, Lady , and 

never was woman of a dove-like nature more un- 
suitably mated, for , when in anger, was perfectly 

frantic. His face was as fine as a countenance could 
be which expressed so ungovernable and dangerous 
a temper; the finest red and white, dark eyes and 
brows, and black curling hair; but the expression 
was rather that of a savage than of a civilised being, 
and no savage could be more violent. He had seasons 
of good nature, and at the worst was rather to be 
dreaded than disliked ; for he was plainly not master 
of himself. 

But I had cause to dread him; for he once at- 
tempted to hold me by the leg out of the window; 
it was the first floor, and over a stone area; had I 
not struggled in time, and clung to the frame with 
both hands, my life would probably have been 
sacrificed to this freak of temporary madness. He 
used to pour water into my ear when I was a-bed 
and asleep, fling the porter-pot or the poker at me, 
and in many ways exercised such a capricious and 
dangerous tyranny, merely by right of the strongest 
(for he was not high enough in the school to fag me), 
that at last I requested Mr. Hayes to remove me into 
another chamber. 

Thither he followed me; and, at a very late hour 
one night, came in wrapt in a sheet, and thinking 
to frighten me by personating a ghost, in which 
character he threw himself upon the bed, and rolled 
upon me. Not knowing who it was, but certain that 



SOUTHEY AT WESTMINSTER 185 

it was flesh and blood, I seized him by the throat, 
and we made noise enough to bring up the usher of 
the house, and occasion an inquiry, which ended 

in requiring 's word that he would never again 

molest me. 

... I was known out of my remove for nothing 
but my curly head. Curly heads are not common, 
I doubt whether they can be reckoned at three per 
cent, upon the population of this country; but 
luckily for me, the present Sir Charles Burrell (old 
Burr ell as we then called him, a very good-natured 
man) had one as well as myself. 

The space between Palace Yard and St. Margaret's 
Churchyard was at that time covered with houses. 
You must remember them, but I knew all the lanes 
and passages there; intricate enough they were, 
and afforded excellent cover, just in the most dan- 
gerous part, on the border, when we were going out 
of bounds, or returning home from such an expedition. 
The improvements which have laid all open there, 
have done no service to the Westminster boys, and 
have deprived me of some of the pleasant est jogging- 
places for memory that London used to contain. 

In one of these passages was the door of a little 
schoolmaster, whose academy was announced by a 
board upon the front of a house, close to St. Mar- 
garet's Churchyard. Some of the day boys in my 
remove took it into their heads, in the pride of 
Westminster, to annoy this academician, by beating 
up his quarters, and one day I joined in the party. 
The sport was to see him sally with a cane in his 



186 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

hand, and to witness the admiration of his own 
subjects at our audacity. 

He complained at last, as he had good cause, to 
Vincent; but no suspicion fell or could fall on the 
real parties; for so it was, that the three or four 
ringleaders in these regular rows were in every 
respect some of the best boys in the school, and the 
very last to whom any such pranks would have 
been imputed. The only indication he could give, 
was that one of the culprits was a curly-headed 
fellow. 

One evening, a little to my amusement, and not 
a little to nty consternation, I heard old Burrell 
say that Vincent had just sent for him, and taxed 
him with making a row at a schoolmaster's in St. 
Margaret's Churchyard; and would hardly believe 
the protestations of innocence, which he reiterated 
with an oath when he told the story, and which I 
very well knew to be sincere. It was his curly head, 
he said, that brought him into suspicion. I kept my 
own counsel, and did not go near the academy again. 

Southey, Autobiography. 

That even long prior to his going to Westminster 
he had found his chief pleasure in his pen, and that 
he had both read and written largely, he has himself 
recorded, and he has also mentioned his having 
made an unsuccessful attempt to obtain admission 
for one of his youthful compositions in a Westminster 
magazine called The Trifler, which appears to have 
had only a brief existence. 



SOUTHEY AT WESTMINSTER 187 

It was not long, however, before he found an 
opportunity of making his first essay in print, which 
proved not a little unfortunate in its results. Having 
attained the upper classes of the school, in con- 
junction with several of his more particular friends, 
he set on foot a periodical entitled The Flagellant, 
which reached only nine numbers, when a sarcastic 
attack upon corporal punishment, as then inflicted, 
it seems, somewhat unsparingly at Westminster, 
roused the wrath of Dr. Vincent, the head master, 
who immediately commenced a prosecution for 
libel against the publisher. 

This seems to have been a harsh and extraordinary 
proceeding; for the master's authority, judiciously 
exercised, might surely have controlled or stopped 
the publication; neither was there anything in the 
paper itself which ought to have made a wise man 
angry; like most of the others, it is merely a school- 
boy's imitation of a paper in the Spectator or Rambler. 
A letter of complaint from an unfortunate victim 
to the rod is supposed to have been called forth by 
the previous numbers, and the writer now comments 
on this, and enters into a dissertation on flogging 
with various quotations, ascribing its invention to 
the author of all evil. The signature was a feigned 
one; but my father immediately acknowledged 
himself the writer, and reluctantly apologised. The 
Doctor's wrath, however, was not to be appeased, 
and he was compelled to leave the school. . . . 

It had been intended that he should enter at Christ 

Dissertation. A discussion. 



188 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

Church, and his name had been put down there for 
some time, but the dean (Cyril Jackson), having 
heard of the affair of the Flagellant, refused to admit 
him. 

C. C. Southey, Life of Robert Southey. 



AT THE TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS, 
WESTMINSTER HALL, 1788 

The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the 
great hall of William Rufus, the hall which had 
resounded with acclamations at the inauguration 
of thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed the 
just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of 
Somers, the hall where the eloquence of Stratford 
had for a moment awed and melted a victorious 
party inflamed with just resentment, the hall where 
Charles had confronted the High Court of Justice 
with the placid courage which has half redeemed 
his fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was 
wanting. 

The avenues were lined with grenadiers. The 
streets were kept clear by cavalry. The peers, robed 
in gold and ermine, were marshalled by the heralds 
under Garter King-at-arms. The judges in their 
vestments of state attended to give advice on points 
of law. Near a hundred and seventy lords, three 
fourths of the Upper House as the Upper House 
then was, walked in solemn order from their usual 



TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS 189 

place of assembly to the tribunal. The junior Baron 
present led the way, George Eliot t, Lord Heathfield, 
recently ennobled for his memorable defence of 
Gibraltar against the fleets and armies of France 
and Spain. The long procession was closed by the 
Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of the realm, by the 
great dignitaries, and by the brothers and sons of 
the King. Last of all came the Prince of Wales, 
conspicuous by his fine person and noble bearing. 

The grey old walls were hung with scarlet. The 
long galleries were crowded by an audience such 
as has rarely excited the fears or the emulation of 
an orator. There were gathered together from all 
parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous 
empire grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, 
the representatives of every science and of every art. 
There were seated round the Queen the fair-haired 
young daughters of the House of Brunswick. There 
the ambassadors of great kings and commonwealths 
gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no 
other country in the world could present. There 
Siddons, in the prime of her majestic beauty, looked 
with emotion on a scene surpassing all the imitations 
of the stage. There the historian of the Roman 
Empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded 
the cause of Sicily against Verres, and when, before 
a senate which still retained some sure freedom, 
Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa. 
There were seen, side by side, the greatest painter 
and the greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle 
had allured Reynolds from that easel which has 



igo LONDON IN LITERATURE 

preserved to us the thoughtful foreheads of so many 
writers and statesmen, and the sweet smiles of so 
many noble matrons. . . . 

The Sergeants made proclamation. Hastings ad- 
vanced to the bar, and bent his knee. The culprit 
was indeed not unworthy of that great presence. 
He had ruled an extensive and populous country, 
had made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies, 
had set up and pulled down princes. And in his 
high place he had so borne himself, that all had 
feared him, that most had loved him, and that 
hatred itself could deny him no title to glory, except 
virtue. He looked like a great man, and not like a 
bad man. . . . 

But neither the culprit nor his advocates attracted 
so much notice as the accusers. In the midst of the 
blaze of red drapery, a space had been fitted up with 
green tables and benches for the Commons. The 
managers, with Burke at their head, appeared in 
full dress. The collectors of gossip did not fail to 
remark that even Fox, generally so regardless of his 
appearance, had paid to the illustrious tribunal the 
compliment of wearing a bag and sword. Pitt had 
refused to be one of the conductors of the impeach- 
ment; and his commanding, copious, and sonorous 
eloquence was wanting to that great muster of 
various talents. Age and blindness had unfitted 
Lord North for the duties of a public prosecutor; 
and his friends were left without the help of his 
excellent sense, his tact and his urbanity. 

But in spite of the absence of these two distin- 



HUNT AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 191 

guished members of the Lower House, the box in 
which the managers stood contained an array of 
speakers such as perhaps had not appeared together 
since the great age of Athenian eloquence. There 
were Fox and Sheridan, the English Demosthenes 
and the English Hyperides. There was Burke, 
ignorant, indeed, or negligent of the art of adapting 
his reasonings and his style to the capacity and 
taste of his hearers, but in amplitude of compre- 
hension and richness of imagination superior to every 
orator, ancient or modern. . . . 

Macaulay, Essays. 

Note. — The charge against Warren Hastings was that 
whilst Governor-General of India he acted in certain matters 
without authority. The trial lasted more than seven years, 
when Hastings, a ruined man, was acquitted. He was pen- 
sioned by the East India Company. 



LEIGH HUNT AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 

Our routine of life was this: — We rose to the call 
of a bell, at six in summer, and seven in winter; 
and after combing ourselves, and washing our hands 
and faces, went at the call of another bell to break- 
fast. All this took up about an hour. From breakfast 
we proceeded to School, where we remained till 
eleven, winter and summer, and then had an hour's 
play. Dinner took place at twelve. Afterwards 

Demosthenes and Hyperides were the most eminent of the 
Greek orators. They lived at the same time. 



IQ2 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

was a little play till one, when we again went to 
School, and remained till five in summer and four 
in winter. At six was the supper. We used to play 
after it in summer till eight. In winter, we proceeded 
from supper to bed. 

The Under Grammar Master, in my time, was the 
Rev. Mr. Field. He was a good-looking man, very 
gentlemanly, and always dressed at the neatest. 
I believe he once wrote a play. He had the reputation 
of being admired by the ladies. A man of more 
handsome incompetence for his situation perhaps 
did not exist. He came late of a morning; went 
away soon in the afternoon; and used to walk up 
and down languidly bearing his cane as if it were a 
lily, and hearing our eternal Dominuses and As in 
prcesentis, with an air of ineffable endurance. Often 
he did not hear at all. 

It was a joke with us, when any of our friends 
came to the door, and we asked his permission to go 
to them, to address him with some preposterous 
question wide of the mark; to which he used to 
assent. We would say, for instance, " Are you not 
a great fool, sir? " or, " Isn't your daughter a pretty 
girl? " to which he would reply, " Yes, child." 
When he condescended to hit us with the cane, he 
made a face as if he were taking a dose of physic. 

Perhaps there is not a foundation in the country 
so truly English, taking that word to mean what 
Englishmen wish it to mean — something solid, 
unpretending, and free to all. More boys are to be 

Eternal Dominuses, etc. Class-work repetition. 



HUNT AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 193 

found in it who issue from a greater variety of ranks, 
than in any school in the kingdom; and as it is the 
most various, so it is the largest of all the Free 
Schools, Nobility do not go there except as boarders. 
Now and then a boy of noble family may be met 
with, and he is reckoned an interloper and against 
the charter ; but the sons of poor gentry, and London 
citizens, abound; and with them an equal share is 
given to the son 5 of tradesmen of the very humblest 
description, not omitting servants. 

I would not take my oath — but I have a strong 
recollection, that in my time there were two boys, 
one of whom went up into the drawing-room to his 
father, the master of the house; and the other down 
into the kitchen to his father, the coachman. One 
thing however I know to be certain, and it is the 
noblest of all, namely, that the boys themselves 
(at least it was so in my time) had no sort of feeling 
of the difference of one another's ranks out of doors. 
The cleverest boy was the noblest, let his father be 
who he might. 

Christ's Hospital is a nursery of tradesmen, of 
merchants, of naval officers, of scholars; it has 
produced some of the greatest ornaments of their 
time; and the feeling among the boys themselves 
is, that it is a medium between the patrician pre- 
tension of such schools as Eton and Westminster, 
and the plebeian submission of the Charity Schools. 
Leigh Hunt, Autobiography. 

Patrician. Of noble blood. 

Plebeian. Referring to the common people. 



i 9 4 LONDON IN LITERATURE 



EDMUND BURKE AND CHARLES 
JAMES FOX 

This contention presented amid contending shouts 
of "Chair! chair!" "Hear! hear!" "Order! 
order! " " Go on! go on! " a scene which he re- 
marked at the moment was only to be paralleled in 
the political assemblages of a neighbouring country 
of which he was endeavouring to convey some idea 
to the House. 

At length, an express vote of censure for noticing 
the affairs of France was moved against him (Burke) 
by Lord Sheffield and seconded by Mr. Fox. 

Mr. Pitt, on the contrary, leaned to his views and 
urged his being in order; that he was grateful to 
the right hon. gentleman for the manly struggle 
made by him against French principles; that his 
views should receive support whenever danger 
approached; and that his zeal and eloquence in 
such a cause entitled him to the gratitude of his 
fellow-subjects. 

Mr. Fox followed in a vehement address, alter- 
nately rebuking and complimenting Burke in a 
high strain, and while vindicating his own opinions, 
questioning the truth and consistency of those of 
his right hon. friend, whom he must ever esteem his 
master, but who nevertheless seemed to have for- 
gotten the lessons he had once taught him. In 
support of the charge of inconsistency thus advanced 



BURKE AND FOX 195 

he quoted several sarcastic and ludicrous remarks 
of little moment at any time and scarcely worth 
repeating then, but which, as they had been expressed 
fourteen or fifteen years before, seemed to be raked 
up for the occasion. In this, there was an appearance 
of premeditation and want of generosity, which hurt 
Mr. Burke, as he afterwards expressed to a friend, 
more than any public occurrence of his life, and he 
rose to reply under the influence of painful and 
strong feelings. 

He complained, after debating the main question, 
of being treated with harshness and malignity for 
which the motive seemed unaccountable — of being 
personally attacked from a quarter where he least 
expected it after an intimacy of more than twenty- 
two years, — of his public sentiments and writings 
being garbled, and his confidential communications 
violated, to give colour to an unjust charge. At his 
time of life it was obviously indiscreet to provoke 
enemies or to lose friends, as he could not hope for 
the opportunities necessary to acquire others, yet 
if his steady adherence to the British constitution 
placed him in such a dilemma, he would risk all, 
and, as public duty and prudence taught him, with 
his last breath exclaim, " Fly from the French 
constitution! " 

Mr. Fox here observed, "There is no loss of friend- 
ship." 

" I regret to say there is," was the reply — " I 
know the value of my line of conduct ; I have indeed 
made a great sacrifice; I have done my duty though 



196 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

I have lost my friend. There is something in the 
detested French constitution that envenoms every- 
thing it touches." 

After many comments on the question he attempted 
to conclude with an elegant apostrophe to the re- 
spective heads of the great parties in the state, 
steadfastly to guard against innovations and untried 
theories the sacred edifice of the British constitution, 
when he was again twice interrupted by Mr. Grey. 

Mr. Fox, unusually excited by this public renun- 
ciation of long intimacy, rose under excited feelings, 
" so that it was some moments," says the Morning 
Chronicle report, " before he could proceed. Tears 
rolled down his cheeks, and he strove in vain to give 
utterance to feelings that dignified his nature." 
When he had recovered, besides adverting to French 
affairs, an eloquent appeal broke forth to his old and 
revered friend — to the remembrance of their past 
attachment — their inalienable friendship — their re- 
ciprocal affection, as dear and almost as binding as 
the ties of nature between father and son. (But) 
thenceforward the intimacy of these illustrious men 
ceased. 

Prior, Life of Edmund Burke. 



WESTMINSTER BRIDGE 197 



WORDSWORTH ON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE 

Earth has not anything to show more fair; 

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by 

A sight so touching in its majesty; 

This City now doth, like a garment, wear 

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, 

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie 

Open unto the fields, and to the sky ; 

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. 

Never did sun more beautifully steep 

In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; 

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! 

The river glideth at his own sweet will: 

Dear God ! the very houses seem asleep : 

And all that mighty heart is lying still! 

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, 
September 3, 1802. 



PITT— NELSON— WELLINGTON, AT 
DOWNING STREET 

Before he finally left London, Nelson went to take 
leave of Mr. Pitt, and then returned, for the last 
time, to his family and friends at Merton. . . . 

It appears (from the statement of Nelson's nephew) 
that Lord Nelson on his return to Merton, being 
asked in what manner he had been received by Mr. 
Pitt, replied that he had every reason to be gratified. 



198 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

At Mr. Pitt's desire he had explained his whole views 
upon the naval war. As regarded the French fleet 
at Cadiz, Mr. Pitt had asked what force would be 
sufficient to ensure a victory over it. Lord Nelson 
mentioned his opinion on that point, but added, 
that his object was not merely to conquer, but to 
annihilate; on which Mr. Pitt assured him that 
whatever force Lord Nelson held necessary for that 
object should, so far as possible, be sent out to him. 
And then Lord Nelson, telling the tale to his family, 
added these words : 

"Mr. Pitt paid me a compliment, which, I believe, 
he would not have paid to a Prince of the Blood. 
When I rose to go, he left the room with me and 
attended me to the carriage." 

How great a parting scene — Nelson sent forth by 
Pitt to Trafalgar! Surely it might deserve not only 
a biographer's commemoration, but also an artist's 
skill. . . . 

In the course of that same September there landed 
from India a man destined to play a part not less 
memorable than Lord Nelson's in the warlike annals 
of his country. This was Sir Arthur Wellesley. . . . 

Sir Arthur on his arrival in London was most 
warmly welcomed by Mr. Pitt, both as the brother 
of a constant friend, and as himself the victor of 
Assaye and Argaum. They had many conversations 
on military matters, and each made a most favourable 
impression on the other. What Mr. Pitt said of Sir 
Arthur only a few days before his own death, will 
be recorded by me in its proper place. The Duke of 



" THE LONDONER" 199 

Wellington, to the close of his life, continued to speak 
of Mr. Pitt in terms of high regard and veneration. 
He used, during several years, to attend the anni- 
versaries of the Pitt dinner, with the object of doing 
honour to his memory; and he has more than once 
told me that, in his opinion, Mr. Pitt was the greatest 
Minister that has ever ruled in England. 

Stanhope, Life of Pitt. 



"THE LONDONER" 

I was born under the shadow of St. Dunstan's steeple, 
just where the conflux of the eastern and western 
inhabitants of this twofold city meet and jostle in 
friendly opposition at Temple Bar. The same day 
which gave me to the world saw London happy in 
the celebration of her great annual feast. This I 
cannot help looking upon as a lively omen of the 
future great good-will which I was destined to bear 
towards the city, resembling in kind that solicitude 
which every chief magistrate is supposed to feel 
for whatever concerns her interests and well-being. 
Indeed I consider myself in some sort a speculative 
Lord Mayor of London; for though circumstances 
unhappily preclude me from the hope of ever arriving 
at the dignity of a gold chain and Spital Sermon, 
yet thus much will I say of myself in truth, that 
Whittington with his cat (just emblem of vigilance and 
a furred gown) never went beyond me in the affection 
which I bear to the citizens. 



200 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

I was born, as you have heard, in a crowd. This 
has begot in me an entire affection for that way of 
life, amounting to an almost insurmountable aversion 
from solitude and rural scenes. This aversion was 
never interrupted or suspended, except for a few 
years in the younger part of my life, during a period 
in which I had set my affections upon a charming 
young woman. Every man while the passion is 
upon him, is for a time at least addicted to groves 
and meadows and purling streams. During this 
short period of my existence, I contracted just 
familiarity enough with rural objects to understand 
tolerably well ever after the poets, when they declaim 
in such passionate terms in favour of a country 
life. 

For my own part, now the fit is passed, I have 
no hesitation in declaring, that a mob of happy 
faces crowding up at the pit door at Drury Lane 
Theatre, just at the hour of six, gives me ten thousand 
sincerer pleasures, than I could ever receive from all 
the flocks of silly sheep that ever whitened the 
plains of Arcadia or Epsom Downs. 

This passion for crowds is nowhere feasted so full 
as in London. The man must have a rare recipe for 
melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street. I am 
naturally inclined to hypochondria, but in London 
it vanishes, like all other ills. Often when I have 
felt a weariness or distaste at home, have I rushed 
out into her crowded Strand, and fed my humour, 
till tears have wetted my cheek for inutterable 

Hypochondria. Melancholy. 



" THE LONDONER" 201 

sympathies with the multitudinous moving picture, 
which she never fails to present at all hours, like the 
scenes of a shifting pantomime. 

The very deformities of London, which give dis- 
taste to others, from habit do not displease me. 
The endless succession of shops where Fancy mis- 
called Folly is supplied with perpetual gauds and 
toys, excite in me no Puritanical aversion. I gladly 
behold every appetite supplied with its proper food. 
The obliging customer and the obliged tradesman 
— things which live by bowing, and things which 
exist but for homage — do not affect me with disgust ; 
from habit I perceive nothing but urbanity, where 
other men, more refined, discover meanness; I love 
the very smoke of London, because it has been the 
medium most familiar to my vision. I see grand 
principles of honour at work in the dirty ring which 
encompasses two combatants with fists, and prin- 
ciples of no less eternal justice in the detection of a 
pickpocket. The salutary astonishment with which 
an execution is surveyed, convinces me more forcibly 
than a hundred volumes of abstract polity, that the 
universal instinct of man in all ages has leaned to 
order and good government. 

Thus an art of extracting morality from the 
commonest incidents of a town life, is attained by 
the same well-natured alchemy, with which the 
foresters of Arden, in a beautiful country 

Found tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything. 

Alchemy. An attempt to change base metal into gold. 



202 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

Where has spleen her food but in London? 
Humour, interest, curiosity, suck at her measure- 
less breasts, without a possibility of being satiated. 
Nursed among her noise, her crowds, her beloved 
smoke, what have I been doing all my life, if I have 
not lent out my heart with usury to such scenes ? 

Charles Lamb, Essays. 

r 

AT NO. 4, INNER TEMPLE LANE 

I was invited to meet Lamb at dinner, at the house 
of Mr. William Evans, a gentleman holding an office 
in the India House, who then lived in Weymouth 
Street, and who was a proprietor of the Pamphleteer, 
to which I had contributed some idle scribblings. 
My duties at the office did not allow me to avail 
myself of this invitation to dinner, but I went up 
at ten o'clock, through a deep snow, palpably con- 
gealing into ice, and was amply repaid when I 
reached the hospitable abode of my friend. There 
was Lamb, preparing to depart, but he stayed half 
an hour in kindness to me, and then accompanied 
me to our common home — the Temple. 

Methinks I see him before me now, as he appeared 
then, and as he continued, with scarcely any per- 
ceptible alteration to me, during the twenty years 
of intimacy which followed, and were closed by his 
death. 

A light frame, so fragile that it seemed as if a 



NO. 4, INNER TEMPLE LANE 203 

breath would overthrow it, clad in clerk-like black, 
was surmounted by a head of form and expression 
the most noble and sweet. His black hair curled 
crisply about an expanded forehead; his eyes, 
softly brown, twinkled with varying expression, 
though the prevalent feeling was sad; and the nose, 
slightly curved, and delicately carved at the nostril, 
with the lower outline of the face regularly oval, 
completed a head which was finely placed on the 
shoulders, and gave importance, and even dignity, 
to a diminutive and shadowy stem. 

Who shall describe his countenance — catch its 
quivering sweetness — and fix it for ever in words? 
There are none, alas! to answer the vain desire of 
friendship. Deep thought, striving with humour; 
the lines of suffering wreathed into cordial mirth; 
and a smile of painful sweetness, present an image 
to the mind it can as little describe as lose. His 
personal appearance and manner are not unfitly 
characterised by what he himself says in one of his 
letters to Manning of Braham: " A compound of 
the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel." 

He took my arm, and we walked to the Temple 
(No. 4, Inner Temple Lane), Lamb stammering out 
fine remarks as we walked; and when we reached 
his staircase, he detained me with an urgency which 
would not be denied, and we mounted to the top 
story, where an old petted servant, called Becky, 
was ready to receive us. 

We were soon seated beside a cheerful fire; hot 
water and its better adjuncts were before us; and 



204 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

Lamb insisted on my sitting with him while he 
smoked " one pipe " — for, alas ! for poor human 
nature — he had resumed his acquaintance with his 
" fair traitress." How often the pipe and the glasses 
were replenished, I will not undertake to disclose; 
but I can never forget the conversation; though at 
first it was more solemn, and in higher mood, than 
any I ever after had with Lamb through the whole 
of our friendship. 

How it took such a turn between two strangers, 
one of them a lad of not quite twenty, I cannot 
tell; but so it happened. We discoursed then of 
life and death, and our anticipation of a world 
beyond the grave. Lamb spoke of these awful 
themes with the simplest piety, but expressed his 
own fond cleavings to life— »to all well-known accus- 
tomed things — and a shivering (not shuddering) 
sense of that which is to come, which he so finely 
indicated in his New Year's Eve, years afterwards. 

It was two o'clock before we parted, when Lamb 
gave me a hearty invitation to renew my visit at 
pleasure; but two or three months elapsed before 
I saw him again. . . . 

The years which Lamb passed in his chambers 
in Inner Temple Lane were, perhaps, the happiest 
of his life. His salary was considerably augmented, 
his fame as an author was rapidly extending; he 
resided near the spot which he best loved; and was 
surrounded by a motley group of attached friends, 
some of them men of rarest parts, and all strongly 
attached to him and to his sister. 



NO. 4, INNER TEMPLE LANE 205 

Here the glory of his Wednesday nights shone 
forth in its greatest lustre. If you did not meet 
there the favourites of fortune; authors whose 
works bore the highest price in Paternoster Row, 
and who glittered in the circles of fashion; you 
might find those who had thought most deeply ; 
felt most keenly; and were destined to produce 
the most lasting influences on the literature and 
manners of the age. 

There Hazlitt, sometimes kindling into fierce 
passion at any mention of the great reverses of his 
idol Napoleon, at other times bashfully enunciated 
the finest criticism on art; or dwelt with genial 
iteration on a passage in Chaucer ; or, fresh from the 
theatre, expatiated on some new instance of energy 
in Kean, or reluctantly conceded a greatness to 
Kemble; or detected some popular fallacy with 
the fairest and the subtlest reasoning. 

There Godwin, as he played his quiet rubber, or 
benignantly joined in the gossip of the day, sat an 
object of curiosity and wonder to the stranger, who 
had been at one time shocked or charmed with his 
high speculation, and at another awestruck by the 
force and graphic power of his novels. 

There Coleridge sometimes, though rarely, took 
his seat; — and then the genial hubbub of voices 
was still; critics, philosophers, and poets, were 
contented to listen; and toil-worn lawyers, clerks 
from the India House, and members of the Stock 
Exchange, grew romantic while he spoke. Lamb 
used to say that he was inferior then to what he 



206 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

had been in his youth; but I can scarcely believe 
it; at least there is nothing in his early writing 
which gives any idea of the richness of his mind so 
lavishly poured out at this time in his happiest 
moods. 

Although he looked much older than he was, his 
hair being silvered all over, and his person tending 
to corpulency, there was about him no trace of 
bodilySickness or mental decay, but rather an air 
of voluptuous repose. His benignity of manner 
placed his auditors entirely at their ease, and 
inclined them to listen delighted to the sweet, low 
tone in which he began to discourse on some high 
theme. Whether he had won for his greedy listener 
only some raw lad, or charmed a circle of beauty, 
rank, and wit, who hung breathless on his words, 
he talked with equal eloquence; for his subject, 
not his audience, inspired him. 

At first his tones were conversational; he seemed 
to dally with the shallows of the subject and with 
fantastic images which bordered it; but gradually 
the thought grew deeper, and the voice deepened 
with the thought; the stream gathering strength 
seemed to bear along with it all things which opposed 
its progress, and blended them with its current; 
and stretching away among regions tinted with 
ethereal colours, was lost at airy distance in the 
horizon of fancy. His hearers were unable to grasp 
his theories, which were indeed too vast to be exhi- 
bited in the longest conversation; but they per- 
ceived noble images, generous suggestions, affecting 



NO. 4, INNER TEMPLE LANE 207 

pictures of virtue, which enriched their minds and 
nurtured their best affections. 

Coleridge was sometimes induced to recite portions 
of Christabel, then enshrined in manuscript from 
eyes profane, and gave a bewitching effect to its 
wizard lines. But more peculiar in its beauty than 
this was his recitation of Kubla Khan. As he repeated 
the passage: 

A damsel with a dulcimer 

In a vision once I saw; 

It was an Abyssinian maid, 

And on her dulcimer she played, 

Singing of Mont Abora ! 

his voice seemed to mount, and melt into air, as 
the images grew more visionary, and the suggested 
associations more remote. 

He usually met opposition by conceding the point 
to the objector, and then went on with his high 
argument as if it had never been raised; thus satis- 
fying his antagonist, himself, and all who heard 
him; none of whom desired to hear his discourse 
frittered into points, or displaced by the near en- 
counter even of the most brilliant wits. 

The first time I met him, which was on one of 
those Wednesday evenings, we quitted the party 
together between one and two in the morning; 
Coleridge took my arm, and led me nothing loath 
at a very gentle pace to his lodgings, at the Gloucester 
Coffee-house, pouring into my ear the whole way an 
argument by which he sought to reconcile the 
doctrines of Necessity and Free-will, winding on 



208 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

through a golden maze of exquisite illustration; 
but finding no end, except with the termination of 
that (to me) enchanted walk. 

Talfourd, Life of Charles Lamb. 



BURLINGTON ARCADE AND HOUSE, 
PICCADILLY 

The Burlington Arcade, famous for small shops and 
tall beadles, is an offset from the grounds of Bur- 
lington House. It is a good place to turn into on 
hot summer days, and wonder how the beadles pass 
their time. 

A man may help himself to a complete French 
education in this thoroughfare. There are sweet- 
meats to begin with; shoemakers, tailors, perru- 
quiers to furnish him from head to foot; jewels and 
flowers to make love with; and, after he has had 
his hair dressed, he may sit down and read a French 
classic. 

Not that we mean to depreciate the advantages 
afforded us by our gallant neighbours. The late 
incursions of French wares and ornaments into this 
country have given an impulse of vivacity to our 
ideas which they much wanted. They have helped 
to teach us that colour and cheerfulness are good 
things for their own sakes; that a little elegance is 
not to be despised because it is cheap; and that if 
the elegance is not always in the highest taste, it 



BURLINGTON ARCADE 209 

is at least an advance upon no taste at all. By taste, 
of course, we mean in such matters; — to say nothing 
of the very finest kinds. We have abundance of 
genius and greatness among us in the greatest things ; 
but we certainly, as a nation, have not hitherto 
acquired the art of turning smaller ones to account, 
and getting the most out of life that we can; — which 
is also a part of the universality of greatness. 

Begging pardon of Burlington Arcade for quitting 
it with so grave a reflection, we turn into the court- 
yard of Burlington House, where a very ludicrous 
recollection encounters us. 

In this place, some fifty years ago, when Bona- 
parte was coming to devour us all, but thought 
better of his breakfast, the St. James's Volunteers, 
by permission of the Duke of Portland, its then 
possessor, were in the habit of mustering. We chanced 
to be one of them. 

We mustered a thousand strong; had grenadiers, 
light infantry, a capital band, and to crown all, a 
Major who was an undertaker in Piccadilly, and 
who was a very fat man with a jovial, youthful face; 
so that our pretensions were altogether of the biggest, 
liveliest, and at the same time most mortal descrip- 
tion. A Colonel, however, was wanting. He was 
granted us in the person of William Pitt Amherst, 
Lord Amherst, afterwards ambassador to China, 
and nephew of the conqueror of Montreal. 

A day was appointed for his taking possession of 
us. We mustered accordingly in the usual place, 
and in the highest spirits. The time arrives; the 



210 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

gates are thrown open; a glimpse is caught of a 
gallant figure on a charger; the band strikes up; 
the regiment presents arms ; enters the noble Colonel, 
and, in the act of answering our salutation, is pitched 
right over his horse's head, in the most beautiful 
of summersets. Our feelings of course would have 
been anything but merry, had the result been 
tragical ; but when the noble lord got up, and kindly 
shook himself, with hilarity in his aspect, to show 
us that all was well, it assuredly took all the sub- 
ordination in us to prevent our gratitude from giving 
way to an uproarious burst of laughter. 

We know not whether the accident produced in 
his lordship any peculiar horror of prostrations in 
the abstract ; but when he afterwards went to China, 
and refused to comply with the ceremony of the 
Ko-tou, or knock of the head on the imperial floor, 
we fear there was not a man who had been in the 
regiment that did not associate the two things in 
his mind. 

Leigh Hunt, A Saunter through the West End. 

Ko-tou, or Kowtow. A Chinese custom of prostrating 
oneself before a superior. 



KEAN'S D£BUT ATDRURY LANE 211 



EDMUND KEAN'S D&BUT AT DRURY LANE 

(1814) 

The one morning rehearsal of the Merchant of Venice 
had been fixed for 12 o'clock (January 26, 1814), 
and precisely at the appointed time Kean made his 
appearance at the theatre. The rehearsal was pro- 
ceeded with. A bombshell exploding in the midst 
of the slender company could not have startled 
them more than the thoroughly original inter- 
pretation which Kean gave to each line of his part. 
Raymond, the acting manager, protested against 
the " innovation," as he termed it. 

" Sir," returned Kean, proudly, " I wish it to be 
an innovation." 

" It will never do, depend upon it," remarked 
the stage manager, with a patronising air that was 
excessively galling. 

" Well, sir," rejoined Kean, " perhaps I may be 
wrong; but, if so, the public will set me right." 

Notwithstanding the bold originality in question, 
his rehearsal was remarkably ineffective ; and the per- 
formers, taking his intentional tameness as a criterion 
of what the public performance would be, predicted 
his failure with energetic liberality. 

The rehearsal concluded. Kean returned home to 
enjoy with his wife the unusual luxury of a dinner. 
He remained at home until six o'clock, when the 
striking of the church clocks warned him that it 
was time to depart. Snatching up a small bundle, 



212 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

containing the few necessaries with which he was 
bound to provide himself, he kissed his wife and 
infant son, and hurriedly left the house. 

" I wish," he muttered, " that I was going to be 

shot." : . . 

Peeping through the eyelet-hole in the curtain, he 
surveyed a dreary hopeless aspect. The announce- 
ment of " Mr. Kean from Exeter " carried with it 
no charm ; another addition to the list of failures for 
which the public were indebted to the discrimination 
of the managers was anticipated; and " there was 
that sense of previous damnation which a thin house 
inspires." The boxes were empty; there were about 
fifty people in the pit, " some quantity of barren 
spectators and idle renters being thinly scattered 
to make up a show." Undaunted by the discouraging 
aspect of affairs, he awaited the decisive moment. 
The cherished hope of twenty years is realised. He 
is before the floats of Drury Lane, and is going to 
show them what an obscure strolling player can 
do. . . . 

He takes up his position, leans across his cane, 
and looks askance at Bassanio as he refers to the 
three thousand ducats — " He is safe," cried Dr. 
Drury. The scene goes on. " I will be assured I 
may " is given with such truth, such significance, 
such beauty, that the audience burst into a shower 
of applause; then! — as he himself expressed it, 
" then, indeed, I felt, I knew, 1 had them with 
me!" . . . 

The act drop falls; all doubts as to a splendid 



KEAN'S D£BUT ATDRURY LANE 213 

success have been removed. In the interval between 
this and his appearance in the fifth scene of the 
second act there was an obvious disposition on the 
part of those who had previously contemned him to 
offer their congratulations; but, as if divining their 
intention, he shrank from observation, and only 
emerged from his concealment as the scene came on 
between Shylock and Jessica, in his very calling to 
whom, " Why, Jessica, I say," there was a charm 
as of music. 

I shall close the record of this memorable night 
in the words of Dr. Doran: " The whole scene — 
that between Shylock and Jessica — was played with 
rare merit; but the absolute triumph was not won 
until the scene — which was marvellous in his hands 
— in the third act between Shylock, Salanio, and 
Salarino, ending with the dialogue between the first 
and Tubal. Shylock' s anguish at his daughter's 
flight, his wrath at the two Christians who made 
sport of his sufferings, his hatred of all Christians 
generally, and of Antonio in particular, and his 
alternations of rage, grief, and ecstasy as Tubal 
enumerated the losses incurred in the search of 
Jessica — her extravagances, and then the ill-luck 
that had fallen on Antonio: in all this there was 
such originality, such terrible force, such assurance 
of a new and mighty master, that the house burst 
forth into a very whirlwind of approbation. ' What 
now? ' was the cry in the green-room. The answer 
was that the presence and power of the genius were 
acknowledged with an enthusiasm that shook the 



214 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

very roof. ' How so few of them kicked up such a 
row,' said Oxbury, ' was something marvellous.' 

" As before, Kean remained reserved and solitary, 
but he was now sought after. Raymond, the acting 
manager, who had haughtily told him that his inno- 
vations would not do, came to offer him oranges. 
Arnold, the stage manager, who had ' young 
manned* him, came to present him — 'Sir' — with 
some negus. 

" Kean cared for nothing more now than his fourth 
act, and in that his triumph culminated. His calm 
demeanour at first, his confident appeal to justice, 
his deafness to the appeal made to him for mercy, 
his steady joyousness when the validity of the bond 
is recognised, his burst of exultation when his right 
is acknowledged, the fiendish eagerness with which 
he whetted the knife — and then the sudden collapse 
of disappointment in the words, ' Is that the law? ' 
in all was made manifest that a noble successor to 
the noblest actors of old had arisen. Then his trem- 
bling anxiety to recover what he had before refused, 
his sordid abjectness as he found himself foiled at 
every turn, his subdued fury, and at the last — and 
it was always the crowning glory of his acting in 
this character — the withering sneer, hardly con- 
cealing the crushed heart, with which he replied 
to the gibes of Gratiano as he left the court; all 
raised a new sensation in the audience, who acknow- 
ledged it in a perfect tumult of acclamation. As he 
passed to the sorry and almost roofless dressing 
room, Raymond saluted him with the confession 



KEAN'S D£BUT AT DRURY LANE 215 

that he had made a hit; Pope, more generous, 
avowed that he had saved the house from ruin." 

With every limb trembling from excitement the 
hero of the night returned to his damp and thread- 
bare apparel, and having received with a hurried 
carelessness the congratulations offered to him, he 
waited on Arnold in the manager's room. He was 
formally informed that their expectations had been 
exceeded, and that the play would be repeated on 
the following Wednesday. To Kean the announce- 
ment was quite superfluous. 

In an almost frenzied ecstasy he rushed through 
the wet to his humble lodging, sprang up the stairs 
and threw open the door. His wife ran to meet him ; 
no words were required; his radiant countenance 
told all; and they mingled together the first tears 
of true happiness they had as yet experienced. He 
told her of his proud achievement, and in a burst 
of exultation exclaimed: 

" Mary, you shall ride in your carriage, and 
Charley, my boy," — taking the child from the cradle 
and kissing him — " you shall go to Eton, and " — 
a sad reminiscence crossed his mind, his joy was 
overshadowed, and he murmured in broken accents, 
" Oh, that Howard had lived to see it! — But he is 
better where he is." 

The goal was won. 

Hawkins, Life of Edmund Kean. 



216 LONDON IN LITERATURE 



WASHINGTON IRVING VISITS THE ABBEY 

I passed some time in Poets' Corner, which occupies 
the end of one of the transepts or cross aisles of the 
Abbey. The monuments are generally simple; for 
the lives of literary men can afford no striking themes 
for the sculptor. Shakespeare and Addison have 
statues erected to their memories; but the greater 
part have busts, medallions, and sometimes mere 
inscriptions. Notwithstanding the simplicity of 
these memorials, I have always observed that the 
visitors to the Abbey remained longest about them. 
A kinder and fonder feeling takes the place of that cold 
curiosity or admiration with which they gaze on the 
splendid monuments of the great and the heroic. 
They linger about these as about the tombs of friends 
and companions; for, indeed, there is something of 
companionship between the author and the reader. 
Other men are known to posterity only through 
the medium of history, which is continually growing 
faint and obscure: but the intercourse between the 
author and his fellow-men is ever new, active, and 
immediate. He has lived for them more than for 
himself; he has sacrificed surrounding enjoyments, 
and shut himself up from the delights of social life 
that he might the more intimately commune with 
distant minds and distant ages. Well may the world 
cherish his renown; for it has been purchased, not 
by deeds of violence and blood, but by the diligent 
dispensation of pleasure. Well may posterity be 






IRVING VISITS THE ABBEY 217 

grateful to his memory; for he has left it an in- 
heritance, not of empty names and sounding actions, 
but whole treasures of wisdom, bright gems of 
thought, and golden veins of language. 

From Poets' Corner I continued my stroll towards 
that part of the Abbey which contains the sepulchres 
of the kings. I wandered among what once were 
chapels, but which are now occupied by the tombs 
and monuments of the great. At every turn I met 
with some illustrious name, or the cognisance of 
some powerful house renowned in history. As the 
eye darts into these dusky chambers of death it 
catches glimpses of quaint effigies; some kneeling 
in niches as if in devotion; others stretched upon 
the tombs, with hands piously pressed together; 
warriors in armour, as if reposing after battle; pre- 
lates with crosiers and mitres; and nobles in robes 
and coronets, lying, as it were, in state. In glancing 
over this scene, so strangely populous, yet where 
every form is so still and silent, it seems almost as 
if we were treading a mansion of that fabled city 
where every being had been suddenly transmuted 
into stone. 

I paused to contemplate a tomb on which lay the 
effigy of a knight in complete armour. A large 
buckler was on one arm; the hands were pressed 
together in supplication on the breast; the face was 
almost covered by the morion, the legs were crossed 
in token of the warrior's having been in the holy 
war. It was the tomb of a crusader; of one of 
Morion. An open helmet. 



218 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

those military enthusiasts who so strangely mingled 
religion and romance, and whose exploits form the 
connecting link between fact and fiction; between 
history and the fairy tale. 

There is something extremely picturesque in the 
tombs of these adventurers, decorated as they are 
with rude armorial bearings and Gothic sculpture. 
They comport with the antiquated chapels in which 
they are generally found; and in considering them, 
the imagination is apt to kindle with the legendary 
associations, the chivalrous pomp and pageantry, 
which poetry has spread over the wars for the 
sepulchre of Christ. They are the relics of times 
utterly gone by; of beings passed from recollection; 
of customs and manners with which ours have no 
affinity. They are like objects from some strange 
and distant land, of which we have no certain know- 
ledge, and about which all our conceptions are vague 
and visionary. There is something extremely solemn 
and awful in these effigies on Gothic tombs, extended 
as if in the sleep of death, or in the supplication of 
the dying hour. They have an effect infinitely more 
impressive on my feelings than the fanciful attitudes, 
the over-wrought conceits, and allegorical groups, 
which abound on modern monuments. 

I have been struck, also, with the superiority of 
many of the old sepulchral inscriptions. There was 
a noble way, in former times, of saying things simply, 
and yet saying them proudly; and I do not know 
an epitaph that breathes a loftier consciousness of 
family worth and honourable lineage, than one 



IRVING VISITS THE ABBEY 219 

which affirms, of a noble house, that " all the brothers 
were brave, and all the sisters virtuous." . . . 

Two small aisles on each side of this chapel present 
a touching instance of the equality of the grave; 
which brings down the oppressor to a level with the 
oppressed, and mingles the dust of the bitterest 
enemies together. In one is the sepulchre of the 
haughty Elizabeth; in the other is that of her 
victim, the lovely and unfortunate Mary. Not an 
hour in the day but some ejaculation of pity is uttered 
over the fate of the latter, mingled with indignation 
at her oppressor. The walls of Elizabeth's sepulchre 
continually echo with the sighs of sympathy heaved 
at the grave of her rival. 

A peculiar melancholy reigns over the aisle where 
Mary lies buried. The light struggles dimly through 
windows darkened by dust. The greater part of the 
place is in deep shadow, and the walls are stained 
and tinted by time and weather. A marble figure 
of Mary is stretched upon the tomb, round which is 
an iron railing, much corroded, bearing her national 
emblem — the thistle. I was weary with wandering, 
and sat down to rest myself by the monument, 
revolving in my mind the chequered and disastrous 
story of poor Mary. 

Washington Irving, The Sketch-Book (1819) 



220 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

QUEEN CAROLINE 

The splendour of the coronation of George IV. (1821), 
which has been described by Sir Walter Scott too 
fully to need repetition, was remarkable for furnishing 
materials for what was, in fact, a political battle 
between the King and his Queen, almost between 
the King and his people. 

On the one side the magnificence of the pageant, 
on the other side the failure of the ill-advised attempt 
of Queen Caroline to enter the Abbey, by a com- 
bination of feelings not altogether unusual, and not 
creditable to the judgment of the English people, 
produced a complete reaction in favour of the 
successful husband against the unsuccessful wife. 

The Queen, after vainly appealing to the Privy 
Council, to the Prime Minister, and to the Earl 
Marshal, rashly determined to be present. At six 
o'clock on the morning of the day, she drove from 
South Audley Street to Dean's Yard, where she 
" vainly endeavoured to enter by the two cloister 
doors." She then proceeded to the regular approach 
by Poets' Corner, and, after some difficulty, found 
her way to the entrance. 

Sir Robert Inglis, then a young man, was charged 
with the duty of keeping order near Poets' Corner. 
It was early in the day, and the procession had not 
yet begun. He heard a cry that the Queen was coming. 
He flew (such was his account), rather than ran, 
to the door of the South Transept. She had just left 
her carriage, and was leaning on Lord Hood's arm, 



QUEEN CAROLINE 221 

magnificently dressed. He had but a moment to 
make up his mind how to meet her. 

"It is my duty," he said, " to announce to your 
Majesty that there is no place in the Abbey prepared 
for your Majesty." 

The Queen paused, and replied, "Am I to understand 
that you prevent me from entering the Abbey? " 

" Madam," he answered, in the same words, " it 
is my duty to announce to you that there is no place 
provided for your Majesty in the Abbey." 

She turned without a word. This was the final 
repulse. She who had come with deafening cheers 
retired in dead silence. Her old coachman, it is said, 
had for the first time that morning harnessed the 
horses reluctantly, conscious that the attempt would 
be a failure. 

On the following day she wrote to the Archbishop 
of Canterbury (Manners-Sutton), expressing her de- 
sire to be crowned some days after the King, and 
before the arrangements were done away with, so 
that there might be no additional expense. The 
Primate answered that he could not, except under 
orders from the King. 

In a few weeks she was dead; and her remains 
— carried with difficulty through the tumultuous 
streets of London, where the tide of popularity had 
again turned in her favour, and greeted with funeral 
welcomes at every halting place in Germany — re- 
posed finally, not at Windsor or Westminster, but 
in her ancestral vault at Brunswick. 

Dean Stanley, Westminster Abbey. 



222 LONDON IN LITERATURE 



DE QUINCEY IN OXFORD STREET 

It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and 
a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show 
than a rainy Sunday in London. My road homewards 
lay through Oxford Street, and near " the stately 
Pantheon " (as Mr. Wordsworth has obligingly 
called it) I saw a druggist's shop. 

The druggist (unconscious minister of celestial 
pleasures!), as if in sympathy with the rainy Sunday* 
looked dull and stupid, just as any mortal druggist 
might be expected to look on a Sunday, and when 
I asked for the tincture of opium, he gave it to me 
as any other man might do: and, furthermore, out 
of my shilling returned to me what seemed to be a 
real copper-halfpenny, taken out of a real wooden 
drawer. 

Nevertheless, in spite of such indications of 
humanity, he has ever since existed in my mind as a 
beatific vision of an immortal druggist, sent down 
to earth on a special mission to myself. And it 
confirms me in this way of considering him, that 
when I next came up to London, I sought him near 
the stately Pantheon, and found him not; and thus 
to me, who knew not his name (if, indeed, he had 
one), he seemed rather to have vanished from Oxford 
Street than to have removed in any bodily fashion. 

The reader may choose to think of him as, possibly, 
no more than a sublunary druggist: it may be so, 
but my faith is better: I believe him to have evan- 



DE QUINCEY IN OXFORD STREET 223 

esced or evaporated. So unwillingly would I connect 
any mortal remembrances with that hour, and 
place, and creature, that first brought me acquainted 
with the celestial drug. . . . 

One night, when we were pacing slowly along 
Oxford Street, and after a day when I had felt un- 
usually ill and faint, I requested her to turn off with 
me into Soho Square. Thither we went; and we 
sate down on the steps of a house, which, to this 
hour, I never pass without a pang of grief, and an 
inner act of homage to the spirit of that unhappy 
girl, in memory of the noble act which she there 
performed. 

Suddenly, as we sate, I grew much worse. I had 
been leaning my head against her bosom, and all 
at once I sank from her arms, and fell backwards 
on the steps. From the sensations I then had, I 
felt an inner conviction of the liveliest kind, that 
without some powerful and reviving stimulus I 
should either have died on the spot, or should, at 
least, have sunk to a point of exhaustion from which 
all re-ascent, under my friendless circumstances, 
would soon have become hopeless. 

Then it was, at this crisis of my fate, that my 
poor orphan companion, who had herself met with 
little but injuries in this world, stretched out a saving 
hand to me. Uttering a cry of terror, but without a 
moment's delay, she ran off into Oxford Street, and 
in less time than could be imagined returned to me 
with a glass of port-wine and spices, that acted upon 
my empty stomach (which at that time would have 



224 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

rejected all solid food) with an instantaneous power 
of restoration; and for this glass the generous girl, 
without a murmur, paid out of her own humble 
purse, at a time, be it remembered, when she had 
scarcely wherewithal to purchase the bare necessaries 
of life, and when she could have no reason to expect 
that I should ever be able to reimburse her. 

O, youthful benefactress ! how often, in succeeding 
years, standing in solitary places, and thinking of 
thee with grief of heart and perfect love — how 
often have I wished that, as in ancient times the 
curse of a father was believed to have a super- 
natural power, and to pursue its object with a fatal 
necessity of self-fulfilment — even so the benediction 
of a heart oppressed with gratitude might have 
a like prerogative ... to awaken thee with an 
authentic message of peace and forgiveness, and of 
final reconciliation! 

De Quincey, Confessions of an 
Opium-Eater (1821). 



DE QUINCEY AT ST. PAUL'S 

The first view of St. Paul's, it may be supposed, 
overwhelmed us with awe; and I did not at that 
time imagine that the sense of magnitude could be 
more deeply impressed. One thing interrupted our 
pleasure. The superb objects of curiosity within the 
Cathedral were shown for separate fees. There were 
seven, I think ; and any one could be seen inde- 






DE QUINCEY AT ST. PAUL'S 225 

pendently of the rest for a few pence. The whole 
amount was a trifle; fourteen pence, I think; but 
we were followed by a sort of persecution — " Would 
we not see the bell?" — "Would we not see the 
model? " — " Surely we would not go away without 
visiting the Whispering Gallery?" — solicitations 
which troubled the silence and sanctity of the place, 
and must tease others as it then teased us, who 
wished to contemplate in quiet this great monument 
of the national grandeur, which was at that very 
time beginning to take a station also in the land, as 
a depository for the dust of her heroes. 

What struck us most in the whole interior of the 
pile, was the view taken from the spot immediately 
under the dome, being, in fact, the very same which, 
five years afterwards, received the remains of Lord 
Nelson. In one of the aisles going off from this centre, 
we saw the flags of France, Spain, and Holland, the 
whole trophies of the war, swinging pompously, and 
expanding their massy draperies, slowly and heavily, 
in the upper gloom, as they were swept at intervals 
by currents of air. At this moment we were pro- 
voked by the showman at our elbow renewing his 
vile iteration of " Twopence, gentlemen; no more 
than twopence for each"; and so on until we left 
the place. The same complaint has often been made 
as to Westminster Abbey. 

Where the wrong lies, or where it commences, I 
know not. Certainly not I nor any man can have a 
right to expect that the poor men who attended us 
should give up their time for nothing, or even to be 

H 



226 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

angry with them for a sort of persecution, on the 
degree of which possibly might depend the comfort 
of their own families. Thoughts of famishing children 
at home leave little room for nice regards of delicacy 
abroad. The individuals, therefore, might or might 
not be blameable. But in any case the system is 
palpably wrong. The nation is entitled to a free 
enjoyment of its own public monuments: not free 
only in the sense of being gratuitous, but free also 
from the molestation of showmen, with their imperfect 
knowledge and their vulgar sentiment. 

De Quincey, The Nation of London. 



NEW LONDON BRIDGE 

The opening of the New London Bridge by their 
Majesties in August of 1831, was kept as a holiday 
throughout London; and the occasion was truly a 
great one. This was a farewell to the old bridge, 
with its memories of a thousand years; and here 
was a far surpassing work, which might carry on 
the mind to a thousand years more. Here it was, 
in all its strength and grace, bestriding the flood 
with its five wide elliptical arches, without obstructing 
the stream; and here it was likely to stand perhaps 
till bridges should be wanted no more. The King 
was in an enthusiasm; so exhilarating did he find 
the grandeur of the scene and the beauty of the day. 

Elliptical. Oval. 



NEW HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT 227 

He told the gentlemen of the Bridge Committee, as 
he stepped out of his barge, that he was most happy 
to see them on London Bridge; that it was certainly 
a most beautiful edifice, and that the spectacle was 
in every way the grandest and the most delightful 
that he ever had the pleasure to witness. — It was 
towards the end of 1832 that the last stone of the 
last arch of old London Bridge dropped into the 
river; and as the circles on the water were effaced, 
a historical scroll of many centuries seemed to be 
closed for ever. 

Harriet Martineau, History of England 
during the Thirty Years' Peace. 



THE NEW HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT 

An interesting item in the business of parliament, 
since the great fire, had been the consideration how 
to provide a new House for the great Council of the 
nation to meet and work in. On request from parlia- 
ment, a royal commission had been appointed in 
1835, to receive plans by open competition for the 
rebuilding of the Houses. Out of more than ninety 
plans, four had been selected for further examination ; 
and to choose among these was the business of the 
renewed committee of 1836. A debate was raised 
by Mr. Hume as to whether the site should not be 
exchanged for a spot more open and elevated — as, 
perhaps, St. James's Palace, and Marlborough House; 
but, besides that certain conveniences were connected 



228 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

with the old site, much property had been bought, 
and many houses pulled down, for the purpose of 
the rebuilding on the same spot. 

The opinion of the Committees of both Houses as 
to the choice of plan and architect, was made apparent 
in March by their proposal of an address to the King, 
to petition him to institute inquiries as to the probable 
expense of executing the plan of Mr. Barry. 

It was considered a great day for Art in England 
when such a work as this was thrown open to com- 
petition. Here was no despotism of rank or fame, 
in king or architect, to settle a matter in which the 
nation should have a share through its representa- 
tives; but, while the tribunal was as good an one 
as could have been found to meet all the needs of 
the case, its nature was a sort of invitation to the 
people to look upon the enterprise as business of 
their own, and learn from it, as we all do from enter- 
prises of our own. It was worth the inconvenience 
and loss from the fire to give the nation such an 
exercise in Art and the love of it as the erection of 
the Palace of Parliament. 

The cost has far exceeded expectation, and is 
still heavy; and it has occurred during a long period 
of distress; but it is hard to say how the money 
could have been better spent than on an object so 
noble, so truly expedient, so plainly extending its 
benefits into a far future, as to the erection of a 
building which will be to a future age what our old 
abbeys and cathedrals are to us now. 

Mr. Barry's plan appears to have put all others 



NEW HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT 229 

out of sight at once — admirable as some of them 
were declared to be. One of its excellencies was that 
there was a largeness and unity about its exterior 
plan which admitted of great modifications, according 
to circumstances and experience, of interior arrange- 
ments; but this advantage was not regarded as a 
merit by disappointed competitors and their advo- 
cates, but rather as a ground of complaint about 
changes and improvements, and departure from 
original proposals. 

If it required the courage of a hero to offer such 
a plan to a body so notoriously utilitarian as the 
British House of Commons, it required further the 
patience of a saint to endure being " hunted and 
pursued " as Mr. Barry was from the moment of the 
preference of the Committees being avowed, and with 
more or less intermission through succeeding years. 
But a man who works for ten thousand generations 
cannot expect perfect sympathy from the existing 
one. He ought to be satisfied with so much as enables 
him to do his work; and Mr. Barry has had much 
more than this. He might be satisfied with looking 
forward to future centuries, when men of an advanced 
order of civilisation will pass through his imposing 
corridors and pictured halls, and pause before his 
magnificent tower, and swell with admiration, with- 
out any more dreaming of criticism than we do in 
pacing a cathedral aisle. 

The criticism appears to be of a more temporary 

Utilitarian. The doctrine that it is excusable to hurt one 
if a hundred are benefited. 



230 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

character even than usual in this case — the most 
vehement being connected with the process of com- 
petition — presently done with — and much of the rest 
being about the proportions of unfinished work. 
All this will die away in a few years; and then the 
general appreciation of the achievement will begin. 
Meantime, the architect has been well sustained by 
admiration and sympathy. 

The principle of competition is admitted also in 
regard to the sculpture and paintings to be deposited 
within. The present will be ever regarded as a mem- 
orable period for British sculptors and painters, as 
well as architects. They have been invited to open 
competition, so conducted as that every artist can 
show before worthy judges, how far he is capable 
of conceiving and presenting the ideas and facts of 
the destiny and story of his nation. If there is genius 
among us, undeveloped, it will be brought out; and 
that which has already made itself known cannot 
but be animated by such an incitement. We may 
hope to see, in the new Houses of Parliament, the 
mind of our time stamped for the contemplation 
of the future, in the form of a history of the past; 
and if this is not done, it must be because we are not 
able to do it ; for the opportunity lies open. Niches 
and pedestals are waiting for statues, and panels 
for paintings ; and all our artists are invited to come 
and try who is most worthy to supply both. If there 
are men to do it, it will be done; and that the case 
is such is a noble feature of the time. 

A beginning of the great enterprise was made in 



OUR TOWN-PLANNING 231 

J 837 by the formation of the embankment along 
the riverside. It was three years more before any- 
thing of the character of the work could show itself; 
and then, when the east end appeared to the height 
of the first floor, everyone was astonished to find how 
far the apparition transcended all expectation of it 
that could be caused by descriptions and drawings. 
Harriet Martineau, History of England 
during the Thirty Years' Peace. 



BEACONSFIELD ON OUR TOWN-PLANNING 

But one suggestion might be made. No profession 
in England has done its duty until it has furnished 
its victim. The pure administration of justice dates 
from the deposition of Macclesfield. Even our boasted 
navy never achieved a great victory until we shot 
an admiral. Suppose an architect were hanged? 
Terror has its inspiration as well as competition. 

Though London is vast it is very monotonous. 
All those new districts that have sprung up within 
the last half-century, the creatures of our commercial 
and colonial wealth, it is impossible to conceive 
anything more tame, more insipid, more uniform. 
Pancras is like Mary-le-bone, Mary-le-bone is like 
Paddington : all the streets resemble each other, 
you must read the names of the squares before you 
venture to knock at a door. 

This amount of building capital ought to have 
produced a great city. What an opportunity for 



232 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

Architecture suddenly summoned to furnish habi- 
tations for a population equal to that of the city of 
Bruxelles, and a population, too, of great wealth. 
Mary-le-bone alone ought to have produced a re- 
volution in our domestic architecture. It did nothing. 
It was built by Act of Parliament. Parliament 
prescribed even a facade. It is Parliament to whom 
we are indebted for our Gloucester Places, and Baker 
Streets, and Harley Streets, and Wimpole Streets, 
and all those flat, dull, spiritless streets, resembling 
each other like a large family of plain children, with 
Portland Place and Portman Square for their re- 
spectable parents. 

The influence of our Parliamentary Government 
upon the fine arts is a subject worth pursuing. The 
power that produced Baker Street as a model for 
street architecture in its celebrated Building Act, 
is the power that prevented Whitehall from being 
completed, and which sold to foreigners all the 
pictures which the King of England had collected 
to civilise his people. 

In our own days we have witnessed the rapid 
creation of a new metropolitan quarter, built solely 
for the aristocracy by an aristocrat. The Belgrave 
district is as monotonous as Mary-le-bone, and is 
so contrived as to be at the same time insipid and 
tawdry. 

Where London becomes more interesting is 
Charing Cross. Looking to Northumberland House, 
and turning your back upon Trafalgar Square, the 
Strand is perhaps the finest street in Europe, blending 



HUGH MILLER AT ST. PAUL'S 233 

the architecture of many periods ; and its river ways 
are a peculiar feature and rich with associations. 
Fleet Street, with its Temple, is not unworthy of 
being contiguous to the Strand. The fire of London 
has deprived us of the delight of a real old quarter 
of the city; but some bits remain, and everywhere 
there is a stirring multitude, and a great crush and 
crash of carts and wains. The Inns of Court, and the 
quarters in the vicinity of the port, Thames Street, 
Tower Hill, Billingsgate, Wapping, Rotherhithe are 
the best parts of London ; they are full of character ; 
the buildings bear a nearer relation to what the 
people are doing than in the more polished quarters. 
Beaconsfield, Tancred (1847). 



HUGH MILLER AT ST. PAUL'S 

And after just a little uncertain wandering, the 
uncertainty of which mattered nothing, as I could 
not possibly go wrong, wander where I might, I 
came full upon St. Paul's, and entered the edifice. 
It is comfortable to have only twopence to pay 
for leave to walk over the area of so noble a pile, 
and to have to pay the twopence, too, to such grave 
clerical-looking men as the officials at the receipt 
of custom. It reminds one of the blessings of a 
religious establishment in a place where otherwise 
they might possibly be overlooked; no private 
company could afford to build such a pile as St. 
Paul's, and then show it for twopences. 



234 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

A payment of eighteenpence more opened my way 
to the summit of the dome, and I saw, laid fairly 
at my feet, all of London that the smoke and the 
weather permitted, in its existing state of dishabille, 
to come into sight. But though a finer morning 
might have presented me with a more extensive and 
a more richly-coloured prospect, it would scarce 
have given me one equally striking. I stood over 
the middle of a vast seething cauldron, and looked 
down through the blue reek on the dim indistinct 
forms that seemed parboiling within. The denser 
clouds were rolling away, but their huge volumes 
still lay folded all around on the outskirts of the 
prospect. 

I could see a long reach of the river, with its 
gigantic bridges striding across; but both ends of 
the tide, like those of the stream seen by Mirza, 
were enveloped in darkness; and the bridges, grey 
and unsolid-looking themselves, as if cut out of 
sheets of compressed vapour, seemed leading to a 
spectral city. Immediately in the foreground there 
lay a perplexed labyrinth of streets and lanes, and 
untraceable ranges of buildings, that seemed the 
huddled-up fragments of a fractured puzzle — diffi- 
cult enough of resolution when entire, and rendered 
altogether unresolvable by the chance that had 
broken it. 

As the scene receded, only the larger and more 
prominent objects came into view — here a spire and 
there a monument, and yonder a square Gothic 
tower; and as it still further receded, I could see 



HUGH MILLER AT ST. PAUL'S 235 

but the dim fragments of things — bits of churches 
inwrought into the cloud, and the insulated pedi- 
ments and columned fronts of public buildings, 
sketched off in diluted grey. 

I was reminded of Sir Walter Scott's recipe for 
painting a battle; a great cloud to be got up as the 
first part of the process; and as the second, here 
and there an arm or a leg stuck in, and here and 
there a head or a body. And such was London, the 
greatest city of the world, as I looked upon it this 
morning, for the first time, from the golden gallery 
of St. Paul's. 

The hour of noon struck on the great bell far 
below my feet; the pigmies in the thoroughfare of 
St. Paul's Yard, still further below, were evidently 
increasing in number and gathering into groups; 
I could see faces that seemed no bigger than fists 
thickening in the windows, and dim little figures 
starting up on the leads of houses; and, then, issuing 
into the Yard from one of the streets, there came a 
long line of gay coaches, with the identical coach 
in the midst, all gorgeous and grand, that I remem- 
bered to have seen done in Dutch gold, full five and 
thirty years before, on the covers of a splendid six- 
penny edition of Whittington and his Cat. Hurrah 
for Whittington, Lord Mayor of London! Without 
having once bargained for such a thing — all unaware 
of what was awaiting me — I had ascended St. Paul's 
to see, as it proved, the Lord Mayor's procession. 

Hugh Miller, First Impressions of England 
and its People (1847). 



236 LONDON IN LITERATURE 



EMERSON AT PRINTING-HOUSE SQUARE 

(1848) 

I went one day with a good friend to the Times 
office, which was entered through a pretty garden- 
yard, in Printing-House Square. We walked with 
some circumspection, as if we were entering a powder- 
mill; but the door was opened by a mild old woman, 
and, by dint of some transmission of cards, we were 
at last conducted into the parlour of Mr. Morris, 
a very gentle person, with no hostile appearances. 

The statistics are now quite out of date, but I 
remember he told us that the daily printing was 
then 35,000 copies; that on the 1st March, 1848, 
the greatest number ever printed, — 54,000 were 
issued; that, since February, the daily circulation 
had increased by 8,000 copies. The old press they 
were then using printed five or six thousand sheets 
per hour; the new machine, for which they were 
then building an engine, would print twelve thousand 
per hour. 

Our entertainer confided us to a courteous assistant 
to show us the establishment, in which, I think, they 
employed a hundred and twenty men. I remember, 
I saw the reporters' room, in which they redact their 
hasty stenographs; but the editor's room, and who 
is in it, I did not see, though I shared the curiosity 
of mankind respecting it. 

Redact. Edit. Stenograph. Shorthand. 



PRINTING-HOUSE SQUARE 237 

The staff of the Times has always been made up 
of able men. Old Walter, Sterling, Bacon, Barnes, 
Alsiger, Horace Twiss, Jones Loyd, John Oxenford, 
Mr. Mosely, Mr. Bailey, have contributed to its 
renown in their special departments. But it has 
never wanted the first pens for occasional assistance. 

Its private information is inexplicable, and recalls 
the stories of Fouche's police, whose omniscience 
made it believed that the Empress Josephine must 
be in his pay. It has mercantile and political corre- 
spondents in every foreign city; and its expresses 
outrun the despatches of the government. 

One hears anecdotes of the rise of its servants, 
as of the functionaries of the India House. I was 
told of the dexterity of one of its reporters, who, 
finding himself, on one occasion, where the magis- 
trates had strictly forbidden reporters, put his hands 
into his coat-pocket, and with pencil in one hand, 
and tablet in the other, did his work. 

The influence of this journal is a recognised power 
in Europe, and, of course, none is more conscious 
of it than its conductors. The tone of its articles 
has often been the occasion of comment from the 
official organs of the continental courts, and some- 
times the ground of diplomatic complaint. What 
would the Times say? is a terror in Paris, in Berlin, 
in Vienna, in Copenhagen, and in Nepaul. 

Its consummate discretion and success exhibit the 
English skill of combination. The daily paper is the 
work of many hands, chiefly, it is said, of young 
men recently from the University, and perhaps 



238 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

reading law in chambers in London. Hence the 
academic elegance, and classic allusion, which adorn 
its columns. Hence, too, the heat and gallantry of 
its onset. But the steadiness of the aim suggests 
the belief that this fire is directed and fed by older 
engineers; as if persons of exact information, and 
with settled views of policy, supplied the writers with 
the basis of fact, and the object to be attained, and 
availed themselves of their younger energy and 
eloquence to plead the cause. Both the council and 
the executive departments gain by this division. 
Of two men of equal ability, the one who does not 
write, but keeps his eye on the course of public 
affairs, will have the higher judicial wisdom. But the 
parts are kept in concert; all the articles appear to 
proceed from a single will. 

The Times never disapproves of what itself has 
said, or cripples itself by apology for the absence of 
the editor, or the indiscretion of him who held the 
pen. It speaks out bluff and bold, and sticks to what 
it says. It draws from any number of learned and 
skilful contributors; but a more learned and skilful 
person supervises, corrects, and co-ordinates. Of 
this closet, the secret does not transpire. No writer 
is suffered to claim the authorship of any paper; 
everything good, from whatever quarter, comes out 
editorially; and thus, by making the paper every- 
thing, and those who write it nothing, the character 
and the awe of the journal gain. 

The English like it for its complete information. 
A statement of fact in the Times is as reliable as a 



PRINTING-HOUSE SQUARE 239 

citation from Hansard. Then, they like its inde- 
pendence; they do not know, when they take it 
up, what their paper is going to say; but, above all, 
for the nationality and confidence of its tone. It 
thinks for them all; it is their understanding and 
day's ideal daguerreotyped. When I see them reading 
its columns, they seem to me becoming every moment 
more British. 

It has the national courage, not rash and petulant, 
but considerate and determined. No dignity or 
wealth is a shield from its assault. It attacks a duke 
as readily as a policeman, and with the most pro- 
voking airs of condescension. It makes rude work 
with the Board of Admiralty. The Bench of Bishops 
is still less safe. One bishop fares badly for his 
rapacity, and another for his bigotry, and a third 
for his courtliness. It addresses occasionally a hint 
to majesty itself, and sometimes a hint which is 
taken. There is an air of freedom even in their adver- 
tising columns, which speaks well for England to a 
foreigner. On the days when I arrived in London 
in 1847, I read among the daily announcements, one 
offering a reward of fifty pounds to any person who 
would put a nobleman, described by name and title, 
late a member of Parliament, into any county jail 
in England, he having been convicted of obtaining 
money under false pretences. 

Was never such arrogancy as the tone of this 

Hansard. The official report of Parliament. 
Daguerreotype. The earliest kind of photograph ; invented 
by Daguerre in 1839. 



240 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

paper. Every slip of an Oxonian or Cantabrigian 
who writes his first leader assumes that we subdued 
the earth before we sat down to write this particular 
Times. One would think the world was on its 
knees to the Times office, for its daily breakfast. 
But this arrogance is calculated. Who would care 
for it, if it " surmised," or " dared to confess," or 
" ventured to predict," etc.? No; it is so, and so it 
shall be. 

The morality and patriotism of the Times claims 
only to be representative, and by no means ideal. 
It gives the argument, not of the majority, but of 
the commanding class. Its editors know better than 
to defend Russia, or Austria, or English vested 
rights, on abstract grounds. But they give a voice 
to the class who, at the moment, take the lead; and 
they have an instinct for finding where the power 
now lies, which is eternally shifting its banks. Sym- 
pathising with, and speaking for the class that rules 
the hour, yet, being apprised of every ground-swell, 
every Chartist resolution, every Church squabble, 
every strike in the mills, they detect the first trem- 
blings of change. They watch the hard and bitter 
struggles of the authors of each liberal movement, 
year by year, — watching them only to taunt and 
obstruct them, — until, at last, when they see that 
these have established their fact, that power is on 
the point of passing to them, they strike in, with 
the voice of a monarch, astonish those whom they 
succour, as much as those whom they desert, and 
make victory sure. Of course, the aspirants see that 



PRINTING-HOUSE SQUARE 241 

the Times is one of the goods of fortune, not to be 
won but by winning their cause. 

Punch is equally an expression of English good 
sense, as the London Times. It is the comic version 
of the same sense. Many of its caricatures are equal 
to the best pamphlets, and will convey to the eye 
in an instant the popular view which was taken of 
each turn of public affairs. Its sketches are usually 
made by masterly hands, and sometimes with genius; 
the delight of every class, because uniformly guided 
by that taste which is tyrannical in England. It is 
a new trait of the nineteenth century, that the wit 
and humour of England, as in Punch, so in the 
humorists, Jerrold, Dickens, Thackeray, Hood, have 
taken the direction of humanity and freedom. 

The Times, like every important institution, shows 
the way to a better. It is a living index of the colossal 
British power. Its existence honours the people who 
dare to print all they know, dare to know all the facts, 
and do not wish to be flattered by hiding the extent 
of the public disaster. There is always safety in 
valour. 

I wish I could add that this journal aspired to 
deserve the power it wields, by guidance of the 
public sentiment to the right. It is usually pretended, 
in Parliament and elsewhere, that the English press 
has a high tone, — which it has not. It has an imperial 
tone, as of a powerful and independent nation. But 
as with other empires, its tone is prone to be official, 
and even officinal. The Times shares all the limi- 
tations of the governing classes, and wishes never 



242 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

to be in a minority. If only it dared to cleave to the 
right, to show the right to be the only expedient, 
and feed its batteries from the central heart of 
humanity, it might not have so many men of rank 
among its contributors, but genius would be its cordial 
and invincible ally ; it might now and then bear the 
brunt of formidable combinations, but no journal 
is ruined by wise courage. It would be the natural 
leader of British reform; its proud function, that of 
being the voice of Europe, the defender of the exile 
and patriot against despots, would be more effectually 
discharged; it would have the authority which is 
claimed for that dream of good men not yet come 
to pass, an International Congress; and the least 
of its victories would be to give to England a new 
millennium of beneficent power. 

Emerson, English Traits. 



CHEAPSIDE 

"O Cheapside! Cheapside!" said I, as I advanced 
up that mighty thoroughfare, " truly thou art a 
wonderful place for hurry, noise, and riches! Men 
talk of the bazaars of the East — I have never seen 
them — but I dare say that, compared with thee, 
they are poor places, silent places, abounding with 
empty boxes, O thou pride of London's east! — 
mighty mart of old renown! — for thou art not a place 
of yesterday; — long before the Roses red and white 



CHEAPSIDE 243 

battled in fair England, thou didst exist — a place 
of throng and bustle — a place of gold and silver, 
perfumes and fine linen. Centuries ago thou couldst 
extort the praises even of the fiercest foes of England. 
Fierce bards of Wales, sworn foes of England, sang 
thy praises centuries ago; and even the fiercest of 
them all, Red Julius himself, wild Glendower's bard, 
had a word of- praise for London's ' Cheape,' for 
so the bards of Wales styled thee in their flowing 
odes. Then, if those who were not English, and hated 
England, and all connected therewith, had yet much 
to say in thy praise, when thou wast far inferior to 
what thou art now, why should true-born English- 
men, or those who call themselves so, turn up their 
noses at thee, and scoff thee at the present day, as 
I believe they do? But, let others do as they will, 
I, at least, who am not only an Englishman, but an 
East Englishman, will not turn up my nose at thee, 
but will praise and extol thee, calling thee mart of 
the world, — a place of wonder and astonishment! — 
and, were it right and fitting to wish that anything 
should endure for ever, I would say prosperity to 
Cheapside, throughout all ages — may it be the 
world's resort for merchandise, world without end." 
George Borrow, Lavengro (1851). 



244 LONDON IN LITERATURE 



GEORGE BORROW ON LONDON BRIDGE 

A strange kind of bridge it was; huge and massive, 
and seemingly of great antiquity. It had an arched 
back, like that of a hog, a high balustrade, and at 
either side, at intervals, were stone bowers bulking 
over the river, but open on the other side, and 
furnished with a semi-circular bench. 

Though the bridge was wide — very wide — it was 
all too narrow for the concourse upon it. Thousands 
of human beings were pouring over the bridge. But 
what chiefly struck my attention was a double row 
of carts and waggons, the generality drawn by horses 
as large as elephants, each row striving hard in a 
different direction, and not unfrequently brought 
to a standstill. Oh the cracking of whips, the shouts 
and oaths of the carters, and the grating of wheels 
upon the enormous stones that formed the pavement ! 
In fact, there was a wild hurly-burly upon the bridge, 
which nearly deafened me. 

But, if upon the bridge there was a confusion, 
below it there was a confusion ten times confounded. 
The tide, which was fast ebbing, obstructed by the 
immense piers of the old bridge, poured beneath 
the arches with a fall of several feet, forming in the 
river below as many whirlpools as there were arches. 
Truly tremendous was the roar of the descending 
waters, and the bellow of the tremendous gulfs, 
which swallowed them for a time, and then cast them 
forth, foaming and frothing from their horrid wombs. 



BORROW ON LONDON BRIDGE 245 

Slowly advancing along the bridge, I came to the 
highest point, and there stood still, close beside one 
of the stone bowers, in which, beside a fruit-stall, 
sat an old woman, with a pan of charcoal at her 
feet, and a book in her hand, in which she appeared 
to be reading intently. There I stood, just above the 
principal arch, looking through the balustrade at 
the scene that presented itself — and such- a scene! 
Towards the left bank of the river, a forest of masts, 
thick and close, as far as the eye could reach ; spacious 
wharves surmounted with gigantic edifices; and, 
far away, Caesar's Castle with its White Tower. To 
the right, another forest of masts, and a maze of 
buildings, from which, here and there, shot up to the 
sky chimneys taller than Cleopatra's Needle, vomiting 
forth huge wreaths of that black smoke which forms 
the canopy — occasionally a gorgeous one — of the 
more than Babel city. Stretching before me, the 
troubled breast of the mighty river, and, immediately 
below, the main whirlpool of the Thames — the 
Maelstrom of the bulwarks of the middle arch — a 
grisly pool, which, with its superabundance of horror, 
fascinated me. Who knows but that I should have 
leapt into its depths ? — I have heard of such things 
— but for a rather startling occurrence which broke 
the spell. 

As I stood upon the bridge, gazing into the jaws 
of the pool, a small boat shot suddenly through the 
arch beneath my feet. There were three persons in 
it; an oarsman in the middle, whilst a man and 
woman sat at the stern. I shall never forget the 



246 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

thrill of horror which went through me at this 
sudden apparition. What! — a boat — a small boat — 
passing beneath that arch into yonder roaring gulf! 
Yes, yes, down through that awful water-way, with 
more than the swiftness pi an arrow, shot the boat, 
or skiff, right into the jaws of the pool. A monstrous 
breaker curls over the prow — there is no hope; the 
boat is swamped, and all drowned in that strangling 
vortex. No! the boat, which appeared to have the 
buoyancy of a feather, skipped over the threatening 
horror, and the next moment was out of danger, 
the boatman — a true boatman of Cockaigne that — 
elevating one of his sculls in sign of triumph, the 
man hallooing, and the woman, a true Englishwoman 
that — of a certain class — waving her shawl. Whether 
any one observed them save myself, or whether the 
feat was a common one, I know not; but nobody 
appeared to take any notice of them. As for myself, 
I was so excited, that I strove to clamber up the 
balustrade of the bridge, in order to obtain a better 
view of the daring adventurers. Before I could 
accomplish my design, however, I felt myself seized 
by the body, and, turning my head, perceived the 
old fruit-woman, who was clinging to me. 

"Nay, dear! don't— don't! " said she. "Don't 
fling yourself over — perhaps you may have better 
luck next time! " 

" I was not going to fling myself over," said I, 
dropping from the balustrade; " how came you to 
think of such a thing? " 

" Why, seeing you clamber up so fiercely, I thought 



BORROW ON LONDON BRIDGE 247 

you might have had ill luck, and that you wished 
to make away with yourself." 

" 111 luck," said I, going into the stone bower and 
sitting down. " What do you mean? Ill luck in 
what?" 

" Why, no great harm, dear! Cly-faking, perhaps." 

" Are you coming over me with dialects," said I, 
" speaking unto me in fashions I wot nothing of? " 

"Nay, dear! don't look so strange with those 
eyes of your'n, nor talk so strangely; I don't under- 
stand you." 

" Nor I you; what do you mean by cly-faking? " 

"Lor', dear! no harm; only taking a handker- 
chief now and then." 

" Do you take me for a thief? " 

"Nay, dear! don't make use of bad language; 
we never calls them thieves here, but prigs and 
fakers: to tell you the truth, dear, seeing you spring 
at that railing put me in mind of my own dear son, 
who is now at Bot'ny: when he had bad luck, he 
always used to talk of flinging himself over the 
bridge; and, sure enough, when the traps were after 
him, he did fling himself into the river, but that 
was off the bank; nevertheless, the traps pulled him 
out, and he is now suffering his sentence; so you see 
you may speak out, if you have done anything in 
the harmless line, for I am my son's own mother, 
I assure you." 

" So you think there's no harm in stealing? " 

'■' No harm in the world, dear! Do you think my 
own child would have been transported for it, if 



248 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

there had been any harm in it? and what's more, 
would the blessed woman in the book here have 
written her life as she has done, and given it to the 
world, if there had been any harm in faking? She, 
too, was what they call a thief and a cutpurse; ay, 
and was transported for it, like my dear son; and 
do you think she would have told the world so, if 
there had been any harm in the thing? Oh, it is a 
comfort to me that the blessed woman was trans- 
ported, and came back — for come back she did, and 
rich too — for it is an assurance to me that my dear 
son, who was transported too, will come back like 
her." 

" What was her name? " 
" Her name? — Blessed Mary Flanders." 
" Will you let me look at the book? " 
" Yes, dear, that I will, if you promise me not to 
run away with it." 

I took the book from her hand; a short, thick 
volume, at least a century old, bound with greasy 
black leather. I turned the yellow and dog's-eared 
pages, reading here and there a sentence. Yes, and 
no mistake! His pen, his style, his spirit might be 
observed in every line of the uncouth-looking old 
volume — the air, the style, and the spirit of the writer 
of the book which first taught me to read. I covered 
my face with my hand, and thought of my child- 
hood. . . . 

" This is a singular book," said I at last; " but it 
does not appear to have been written to prove 
that thieving is no harm, but rather to show the 



BORROW ON LONDON BRIDGE 249 

terrible consequences of crime; it contains a deep 
moral." 

" A deep what, dear? " 

" A but no matter, I will give you a crown 

for this volume." 

"No, dear, I will not sell the volume for a crown." 

" I am poor," said I, " but I will give you two 
silver crowns for your volume." 

" No, dear, I will not sell my volume for two 
silver crowns; no, nor for the golden one in the 
king's tower down there; without my book I should 
mope and pine, and perhaps fling myself into the 
river; but I am glad you like it, which shows that 
I was right about you, after all; you are one of our 
party, and you have a flash about that eye of yours 
which puts me just in mind of my dear son. No, 
dear, I won't sell you my book; but, if you like, you 
may have a peep into it whenever you come this 
way. I shall be glad to see you; you are one of the 
right sort, for if you had been a common one, you 
would have run away with the thing; but you 
scorn such behaviour, and, as you are so flash of 
your money, though you say you are poor, you may 
give me a tanner to buy a little baccy with; I love 
baccy, dear, more by token that it comes from the 
plantations to which the blessed woman was sent." 

" What's a tanner? " said I. 

" Lor'! don't you know, dear? Why, a tanner is 
sixpence; and, as you were talking just now about 
crowns, it will be as well to tell you that those of 
our trade never calls them crowns, but bulls; but 



250 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

I am talking nonsense, just as if you did not know 
that already, as well as myself; you are only 
shamming — I'm no trap, dear, nor more was the 
blessed woman in the book. Thank you, dear, thank 
you for the tanner; if I don't spend it, I'll keep it 
in remembrance of your sweet face. What, you are 
going? — well, first let me whisper a word to you. 
If you have any dies to sell at any time, I'll buy 
them of you; all safe with me; I never 'peach, and 
scorns a trap; so now, dear, God bless you! and 
give you good luck. Thank you for your pleasant 
company, and thank you for the tanner." 

George Borrow, Lavenzro. 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE AT WILLIS'S ROOMS, 
ST. JAMES'S 

June 2nd, 185 1. 

" I came here on Wednesday, being summoned a 
day sooner than I expected, in order to be in time 
for Thackeray's second lecture, which was delivered 
on Thursday afternoon. This, as you may suppose, 
was a genuine treat to me, and I was glad not to 
miss it. It was given in Willis's Rooms, where the 
Almack's balls are held — a great painted and gilded 
saloon with long sofas for benches. The audience 
was said to be the cream of London society, and it 
looked so. I did not at all expect the great lecturer 
would know me or notice me under these circum- 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE 251 

stances, with admiring duchesses and countesses 
seated in rows before him; but he met me as I 
entered — shook hands — took me to his mother, 
whom I had not before seen, and introduced me. 
She is a fine, handsome, young-looking old lady; 
was very gracious, and called with one of her grand- 
daughters next day. 

" Thackeray called, too, separately. I had a long 
talk with him, and I think he knows me now a little 
better than he did ; but of this I cannot yet be sure ; 
he is a great and strange man. 

" There is quite a furore for his lectures. They are 
a sort of essays, characterised by his own peculiar 
originality and power, and delivered with a finished 
taste and ease, which is felt, but cannot be described. 
Just before the lecture began, somebody came 
behind me, leaned over and said, ' Permit me, as a 
Yorkshireman, to introduce myself.' 

" I turned round — saw a strange, not handsome, 
face, which puzzled me for half a minute, and then 
I said, ' You are Lord Carlisle.' 

" He nodded and smiled; he talked a few minutes 
very pleasantly and courteously. 

" Afterwards came another man with the same plea, 
that he was a Yorkshireman, and this turned out 
to be Mr. Monckton Milnes." . . . 

The lady who accompanied Miss Bronte to the 
lecture at Thackeray's alluded to, says that, soon 
after they had taken their places, she was aware 
that he was pointing out her companion to several 



252 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

of his friends, but she hoped that Miss Bronte herself 
would not perceive it. 

After some time, however, during which many 
heads had been turned round, and many glasses 
put up, in order to look at the author of Jane Eyre, 
Miss Bronte said, "I am afraid Mr. Thackeray has 
been playing me a trick," but she soon afterwards 
became too much absorbed in the lecture to notice 
the attention which was being paid to her, except 
when it was directly offered, as in the case of Lord 
Carlisle and Mr. Monckton Milnes. When the lecture 
was ended, Mr. Thackeray came down from the 
platform, and making his way towards her, asked 
her for her opinion. This she mentioned to me not 
many days afterwards, adding remarks almost 
identical with those which I subsequently read in 
Villette, where a similar action on the part of M. 
Paul Emanuel is related. 

As our party left the Hall, he stood at the entrance; 
he saw and knew me, and lifted his hat; he offered 
his hand in passing, and muttered the words " Qu'en 
dites vous ? " — question eminently characteristic, and 
reminding me, even in this his moment of triumph, of 
that inquisitive restlessness, that absence of what I 
considered desirable self-control, which were amongst 
his faults. He should not have cared just then to ask 
what I thought, or what anybody thought; but he did 
care, and he was too natural to conceal, too impulsive 
to repress his wish. Well ! if I blamed his over-eagerness, 
I liked his naivete. I would have praised him; I had 

Naivete. Simplicity. 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE 253 

plenty of praise in my heart ; but alas ! no words on my 
lips. Who has words at the right moment ? I stammered 
some lame expressions; but was truly glad when other 
people, coming up with profuse congratulations, covered 
my deficiency by their redundancy. 

As they were preparing to leave the room, her 
companion saw with dismay that many of the 
audience were forming themselves into two lines, 
on each side of the aisle down which they had to 
pass before reaching the door. Aware that any 
delay would only make the ordeal more trying, her 
friend took Miss Bronte's arm in hers, and they 
went along the avenue of eager and admiring faces. 
During this passage through the " cream of society," 
Miss Bronte's hand trembled to such a degree, that 
her companion feared lest she should turn faint, 
and be unable to proceed; and she dared not express 
her sympathy or tty to give her strength by any 
touch or word, lest it might bring on the crisis she 
dreaded. 

Surely, such thoughtless manifestation of curiosity 
is a blot on the scutcheon of true politeness! 

Mrs. Gaskell, Life of Charlotte Bronte. 



254 LONDON IN LITERATURE 



THE ARTFUL DODGER AT BOW STREET 

It was indeed Mr. Dawkins, who, shuffling into the 
office with the big coat sleeves tucked up as usual, 
his left hand in his pocket, and his hat in his right 
hand, preceded the jailer, with a rolling gait altogether 
indescribable, and, taking his place in the dock, 
requested in an audible voice to know what he was 
placed in that 'ere disgraceful sitivation for. 

" Hold your tongue, will you? " said the jailer. 

"I'm an Englishman, ain't I?" rejoined the 
Dodger. " Where are my priwileges ? " 

" You'll get your privileges soon enough," retorted 
the jailer, " and pepper with 'em." 

" We'll see wot the Secretary of State for the 
Home Affairs has got to say to the beaks, if I don't," 
replied Mr. Dawkins. " Now then! Wot is this here 
business? I shall thank the madg'strates to dispose 
of this here little affair, and not to keep me while 
they read the paper, for I've got an appointment 
with a genelman in the city, and as I'm a man of 
my word and wery punctual in business matters, 
he'll go away if I ain't there to my time, and then 
p'raps there won't be an action for damage against 
them as kept me away. Oh no, certainly not! " 

At this point, the Dodger, with a show of being 
very particular with a view to proceedings to be had 
thereafter, desired the jailer to communicate " the 
names of them two files as was on the bench." Which 
so tickled the spectators, that they laughed almost 



THE ARTFUL DODGER 255 

as heartily as Master Bates could have done if he 
had heard the request. 

" Silence, there! " cried the jailer. 

" What is this? " inquired one of the magistrates. 

" A pickpocketing case, your Worship.' ' 

" Has the boy ever been here before? " 

" He ought to have been, a many times," replied 
the jailer. " He has been pretty well everywhere 
else. / know him well, your Worship." 

" Oh! you know me, do you? " cried the Artful, 
making a note of the statement. " Wery good. 
That's a case of deformation of character, anyway." 

Here there was another laugh, and another cry 
of silence. 

"Now, then, where are the witnesses? " said the 
clerk. 

"Ah! that's right," added the Dodger, "where 
are they? I should like to see 'em." 

This wish was immediately gratified, for a police- 
man stepped forward who had seen the prisoner 
attempt the pocket of an unknown gentleman in a 
crowd, and indeed take a handkerchief therefrom, 
which, being a very old one, he deliberately put back 
again, after trying it on his own countenance. For 
this reason, he took the Dodger into custody as soon 
as he could get near him, and the said Dodger, being 
searched, had upon his person a silver snuff-box, 
with the owner's name engraved upon the lid. This 
gentleman had been discovered on reference to the 
Court Guide, and being then and there present, swore 
that the snuff-box was his, and that he had missed 



256 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

it on the previous day, the moment he had disengaged 
himself from the crowd before referred to. He had 
also remarked a young gentleman in the throng, 
particularly active in making his way about, and 
that young gentleman was the prisoner before him. 

" Have you anything to ask this witness, boy? " 
said the magistrate. 

" I wouldn't abase myself by descending to hold 
no conversation with him," replied the Dodger. 

" Have you anything to say at all? " 

" Do you hear his Worship ask if you've anything 
to say? " inquired the jailer, nudging the silent 
Dodger with his elbow. 

" I beg your pardon," said the Dodger, looking 
up with an air of abstraction. " Did you redress 
yourself to me, my man? " 

" I never see such an out-and-out young wagabond, 
your Worship," observed the officer, with a grin. 
" Do you mean to say anything, you young shaver? " 

" No," replied the Dodger, " not here, for this 
ain't the shop for justice; besides which, my attorney 
is a-breakfasting this morning with the wice-president 
of the House of Commons ; but I shall have something 
to say elsewhere, and so will he, and so will a wery 
numerous and 'spectable circle of acquaintance as '11 
make them beaks wish they'd never been born, or 
that they'd got their footmen to hang 'em up to 
their own hat-pegs afore they let 'em come out this 
morning to try it on upon me. I'll " 

"There! He's fully committed! " interposed the 
clerk. " Take him away." 



DICKENS AS REPORTER 257 

" Come on," said the jailer. 

"Oh, ah! I'll come on," replied the Dodger, 
brushing his hat with the palm of his hand. " Ah ! " 
(to the Bench) "It's no use your looking frightened; 
I won't show you no mercy, not a ha 'port h of it. 
You'll pay for this, my fine fellers. I wouldn't be 
you for something! I wouldn't go free, now, if you 
was to fall down on your knees and ask me. Here, 
carry me off to prison! Take me away! " 

With these last words, the Dodger suffered himself 
to be led off by the collar; threatening, till he got 
into the yard, to make a parliamentary business of 
it; and then grinning in the officer's face, with great 
glee and self-approval. 

Dickens, Oliver Txvist. 



DICKENS AS A REPORTER 

I am not here, advocating the case of a mere ordinary 
client of whom I have little or no knowledge. I hold 
a brief to-night for my brothers. 

I went into the gallery of the House of Commons 
as a parliamentary reporter when I was a boy, and 
I left it — I can hardly believe the inexorable truth 
— nigh thirty years ago. I have pursued the calling 
of a reporter under circumstances of which many of 
my brethren here can form no adequate conception. 
I have often transcribed for the printer, from my 
shorthand notes, important public speeches in which 



258 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

the strictest accuracy was required, and a mistake 
in which would have been to a young man severely 
compromising, writing on the palm of my hand, 
by the light of a dark lantern, in a post-chaise and 
four, galloping through a wild country, and through 
the dead of the night, at the then surprising rate of 
fifteen miles an hour. 

The very last time I was at Exeter, I strolled into 
the castle-yard there to identify, for the amusement 
of a friend, the spot on which I once " took," as we 
used to call it, an election speech of Lord John 
Russell at the Devon contest, in the midst of a lively 
fight maintained by all the vagabonds in that division 
of the county, and under such a pelting rain, that I 
remember two good-natured colleagues who chanced 
to be at leisure held a pocket-handkerchief over my 
note-book, after the manner of a state canopy in an 
ecclesiastical procession. 

I have worn my knees by writing on them on the 
old back row of the old gallery of the old House of 
Commons; and I have worn my feet by standing to 
write in a preposterous pen in the old House of 
Lords, where we used to be huddled together like 
so many sheep — kept in waiting, say, until the 
woolsack might want re-stuffing. 

Returning home from exciting political meetings 
in the country to the waiting press in London, I do 
verily believe I have been upset in almost every 
description of vehicle known in this country. I have 
been, in my time, belated on miry by-roads, towards 
the small hours, forty or fifty miles from London, 



A LONDON FOG 259 

in a wheelless carriage, with exhausted horses and 
drunken post-boys, and have got back in time for 
publication, to be received with never-forgotten 
compliments by the late Mr. Black, coming in the 
broadest of Scotch from the broadest of hearts I 
ever knew. 

These trivial things I mention as an assurance to 
you that I never have forgotten the fascination of 
that old pursuit. The pleasure that I used to feel in 
the rapidity and dexterity of its exercise has never 
faded out of my breast. Whatever little cunning of 
hand or head I took to it, or acquired in it, I have 
so retained that I fully believe I could resume it 
to-morrow, very little the worse for long disuse. 
To this present year of my life, when I sit in this 
hall, or where not, hearing a dull speech (the pheno- 
menon does occur), I sometimes beguile the tedium 
of the moment by mentally following the speaker 
in the old, old way; and sometimes, if you can 
believe me, I even find my hand going on the table- 
cloth, taking an imaginary note of it all. 

Charles Dickens, quoted in Forster's Life. 



A LONDON FOG 

London. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the 
Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Im- 
placable November weather. As much mud in the 
streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from 



2 6o LONDON IN LITERATURE 

the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful 
to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling 
like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke 
lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft 
black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full- 
grown snowflakes — gone into mourning, one might 
imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undis- 
tinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; 
splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, 
jostling one another's umbrellas, in a general in- 
fection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at 
street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot 
passengers have been slipping and sliding since the 
day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new 
deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at 
those points tenaciously to the pavement, and ac- 
cumulating at compound interest. 

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows 
among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, 
where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, 
and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) 
city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish 
heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier- 
brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in 
the rigging of great ships ; fog drooping on the gun- 
wales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and 
throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing 
by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and 

Megalosaurus. An extinct flesh-eating lizard of huge 
dimensions. 

Aits. Small islands in the river. 

Caboose. A ship's galley, or kitchen. 



THE MALL AS PROMENADE 261 

bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, 
down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the 
toes and fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy 
on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over 
the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all 
round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and 
hanging in the misty clouds. 

Gas looming through the fog in divers places in 
the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongy 
fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and plough- 
boy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before 
their time — as the gas seems to know, for it has a 
haggard and unwilling look. 

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog 
is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest, near 
that leaden - headed old obstruction, appropriate 
ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old 
corporation: Temple Bar. And hard by Temple 
Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the 
fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court 
of Chancery. 

Dickens, Bleak House. 



THE MALL AS A PROMENADE 

" A man of sense," says he (Baron de Pollnitz), " or 
a fine gentleman is never at a loss for company in 
London, and this is the way the latter passes his 
time. He rises late, puts on a frock, and, leaving 



262 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

his sword at home, takes his cane, and goes where 
he pleases. The Park is commonly the place where 
he walks, because 'tis the Exchange for men of 
quality. 'Tis the same thing as the Tuileries at Paris, 
only the Park has a certain beauty of simplicity 
which cannot be described. The grand walk is called 
the Mall; is full of people at every hour of the day, 
but especially at morning and evening, when their 
Majesties often walk with the Royal family, who are 
attended only by a half-dozen yeomen of the guard, 
and permit all persons to walk at the same time with 
them. The ladies and gentlemen always appear in 
rich dresses, for the English, who, twenty years ago, 
did not wear gold lace but in their army, are now 
embroidered and bedaubed as much as the French. 
I speak of persons of quality; for the citizens still 
content themselves with a suit of fine cloth, a good 
hat and wig, and fine linen. Everybody is well 
clothed here, and even the beggars don't make so 
ragged an appearance as they do elsewhere." 

After our friend, the man of quality, has had his 
morning or undress walk in the Mall, he goes home 
to dress, and then saunters to some coffee-house or 
chocolate-house frequented by the persons he would 
see. 

'* For 'tis a rule with the English to go once a day 
at least to houses of this sort, where they talk of 
business and news, read the papers, and often look 
at one another without opening their lips. And 'tis 
very well they are so mute; for were they all as 
talkative as people of other nations, the coffee-houses 



FOUNDER'S DAY 263 

would be intolerable, and there would be no hearing 
what one man said where there are so many. The 
chocolate-house in Saint James's Street, where I go 
every morning to pass away the time, is always so 
full that a man can scarce turn about in it." 

Thackeray, The Four Georges. 



FOUNDER'S DAY AT THE CHARTERHOUSE 

Mention has been made once or twice in the course 
of this history of the Grey Friars school, — where the 
Colonel and Clive and I had been brought up, — an 
ancient foundation of the time of James I., still 
subsisting in the heart of London city. 

The death-day of the founder of the place is still 
kept solemnly by Cistercians. In their chapel, where 
assemble the boys of the school, and the four score 
old men of the Hospital, the founder's tomb stands, 
a huge edifice, emblazoned with heraldic decorations 
and clumsy carved allegories. There is an old Hall, 
a beautiful specimen of the architecture of James's 
time; an old Hall? — many halls, old staircases, old 
passages, old chambers decorated with old portraits, 
walking in the midst of which we walk as it were in 
the early seventeenth century. 

To others than Cistercians, Grey Friars is a dreary 
place possibly. Nevertheless, the pupils educated 
there love to revisit it; and the oldest of us grow 



264 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

young again for an hour or two as we come back 
into those scenes of childhood. 

The custom of the school is, that on the 12th of 
December, the Founder's Day, the head gown-boy 
shall recite a Latin oration, in praise Fundatoris 
Nostri, and upon other subjects; and a goodly com- 
pany of old Cistercians is generally brought together 
to attend this oration; after which we go to chapel 
and hear a sermon; after which we adjourn to a 
great dinner, where old condisciples meet, old toasts 
are given, and speeches are made. 

Before marching from the oration-hall to the 
chape), the stewards of the day's dinner, according 
to old-fashioned rite, have wands put into their 
hands, walk to church at the head of the procession, 
and sit there in places of honour. The boys are 
already in their seats, with smug fresh faces, and 
shining white collars; the old black-gowned pen- 
sioners are on their benches; the chapel is lighted, 
and Founder's Tomb, with its grotesque carvings, 
monsters, heraldries, darkles and shines with the 
most wonderful shadows and lights. There he lies, 
Fundator Noster, in his ruff and gown, awaiting the 
great Examination Day. 

We oldsters, be we ever so old, become boys again 
as we look at that familiar old tomb, and think how 
the seats are altered since we were there, and how 
the doctor — not the present doctor, the doctor of our 
time — used to sit yonder, and his awful eye used to 
frighten us shuddering boys, on whom it lighted; 
Fundator Noster. Our Founder (Thomas Sutton). 



FOUNDER'S DAY 265 

and how the boy next to us would kick our shins 
during service time, and how the monitor would cane 
us afterwards because our shins were kicked. 

Yonder sit forty cherry-cheeked boys, thinking 
about home and holidays to-morrow. Yonder sit 
some threescore old gentlemen pensioners of the 
hospital, listening to the prayers and the psalms. 
You hear them coughing feebly in the twilight, — 
the old reverend blackgowns. 

Is Codd Ajax alive, you wonder? — the Cistercian 
lads called these old gentlemen Codds, I know not 
wherefore — but is old Codd Ajax alive, I wonder? or 
Codd Soldier? or kind old Codd Gentleman? or has 
the grave closed over them ? 

How solemn the well-remembered prayers are, 
here uttered again in the place where in childhood 
we used to hear them! How beautiful and decorous 
the rite ; how noble the ancient words of the suppli- 
cations which the priest utters, and to which gener- 
ations of fresh children and troops of bygone seniors 
have cried Amen! under those arches! The service 
for Founder's Day is a special one ; one of the psalms 
selected being the thirty-seventh, and we hear — 

23. The steps of a good man are ordered by the 
Lord; and he delighteth in his way. 

24. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast 
down; for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand. 

25. I have been young, and now am old; yet have 
I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging 
their bread. 



266 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

As we came to this verse, I chanced to look up 
from my book towards the swarm of black-coated 
pensioners; and amongst them — amongst them — 
sate Thomas Newcome. 

His dear old head was bent down over his prayer- 
book; there was no mistaking him. He wore the 
black gown of the pensioners of the Hospital of Grey 
Friars. His order of the Bath was on his breast. He 
stood there amongst the poor brethren, uttering the 
responses to the psalm. The steps of this good man 
had been ordered hither by Heaven's decree; to 
this almshouse! Here it was ordained that a life 
all love, and kindness, and honour, should end! I 
heard no more of prayers, and psalms, and sermon, 
after that. How dared I to be in a place of mark, 
and he, he yonder among the poor? Oh, pardon, 
you noble soul! I ask forgiveness of you for being 
of a world that has so treated you — you my better, 
you the honest, and gentle, and good! I thought 
the service would never end, or the organist's volun- 
taries, or the preacher's homily. 

The organ played us out of chapel at length, and 
I waited in the ante-chapel until the pensioners took 
their turn to quit it. My dear, dear old friend! I 
ran to him with a warmth and eagerness of recog- 
nition which no doubt showed themselves in my face 
and accents as my heart was moved at the sight of 
him. His own wan face flushed up when he saw me, 
and his hand shook in mine. 

Thackeray, The Newcomes (1854). 



THE FIRE BRIGADE 267 



DEATH OF THE COLONEL 

At the usual evening hour the chapel bell began to 
toll, and Thomas Newcome's hands outside the bed 
feebly beat time. And just as the last bell struck, 
a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, and he 
lifted up his head a little, and quickly said, " Adsum ! " 
and fell back. It was the word we used at school, 
when names were called; and, lo, he, whose heart 
was as that of a little child, had answered to his 
name, and stood in the presence of The Master. 

Ibid. 



THE FIRE BRIGADE 

. . . "It's getting darker, we must be in some 
dreadful part of London." 

The contrast he presented to my sensations be- 
tween our pleasant home and this foggy solitude 
gave me a pang of dismay. I diverged from my 
favourite straight line, which seemed to pierce into 
the bowels of the earth, sharp to the right. Soon 
or late after, I cannot tell, we were in the midst of 
a thin stream of people, mostly composed of boys 
and young women, going at double time, hooting and 
screaming with the delight of loosened animals, not 
quite so agreeably; but animals never hunted on a 
better scent. A dozen turnings in their company 
brought us in front of a fire. There we saw two houses 



268 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

preyed on by the flames, just as if a lion had his paws 
on a couple of human creatures, devouring them; 
we heard his jaws, the cracking of bones, shrieks, 
and the voracious in-and-out of his breath edged with 
anger. A girl by my side exclaimed, " It's not the 
Bench, after all! Would I have run to see a paltry 
two-storey washerwoman's mangling-shed flare up, 
when six penn'orth of squibs and shavings and a 
cracker make twice the fun! "... 

We got into the heat, which was in a minute 
scorching. Three men were under the window; they 
had sung out to the old woman above to drop a 
blanket — she tossed them a water- jug. She was saved 
by the blanket of a neighbour. Temple and I strained 
at one corner of it to catch her. 

She came down, the men said, like a singed turkey. 
The flames illuminated her as she descended. There 
was a great deal of laughter in the crowd, but I was 
shocked. Temple shared the painful impression pro- 
duced on me. I cannot express my relief when the 
old woman was wrapped in the blanket which had 
broken her descent, and stood like a blot instead of a 
figure. I handed a sovereign to the three men, com- 
plimenting them on the humanity of their dispositions. 
They cheered us, and the crowd echoed the cheer, 
and Temple and I made our way back to the two 
girls; both of us lost our pocket-handkerchiefs, and 
Temple a penknife as well. 

Then the engines arrived and soused the burning 
houses. We were all in a crimson mist, boys smoking, 
girls laughing and staring, men hallooing, hats and 



IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON 269 

caps flying about, fights going on, people throwing 
their furniture out of the windows. The great wall 
of the Bench was awful in its reflection of the 
labouring flames — it rose out of sight like the flame- 
tops till the columns of water brought them down. . . 
" A glorious life a fireman's! " said Temple. 

The firemen were on the roofs of the houses, hand- 
some as Greek heroes, and it really did look as if 
they were engaged in slaying an enormous dragon, 
that hissed and tongued at them, and writhed its 
tail, paddling its broken big red wings in the pit of 
wreck and smoke, twisting and darkening — some- 
thing fine to conquer, I felt with Temple. 

George Meredith, Harry Richmond. 

{By consent of Messrs. Constable & Co. Ltd., London, 
and Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.) 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON 

As Rob stepped out of the train at King's Cross he 
realised sharply that he was alone in the world. He 
did not know where to go now, and his heart sank 
for a time as he paced the platform irresolutely, 
feeling that it was his last link to Silchester. He 
turned into the booking-office to consult a time-table, 
and noticed against the wall a railway map of 
London. For a long time he stood looking at it, and 
as he traced the river, the streets familiar to him by 

The Bench. A debtors' prison. 



270 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

name, the districts and buildings which were house- 
hold words to him, he felt that he must live in London 
somehow. He discovered Fleet Street in the map, 
and studied the best way of getting to it from King's 
Cross. Then grasping his stick firmly, he took pos- 
session of London as calmly as he could. 

Rob never found any difficulty afterwards in 
picking out the shabby eating-house in which he had 
his first meal in London. Gray's Inn Road remained 
to him always its most romantic street because he 
went down it first. He walked into the roar of London 
in Holborn, and never forgot the alley into which 
he retreated to discover if he had suddenly become 
deaf. He wondered when the crowd would pass. 
Years afterwards he turned into Fetter Lane, and 
suddenly there came back to his mind the thoughts 
that had held him as he went down it the day he 
arrived in London. 

A certain awe came upon Rob as he went down 
Fleet Street on the one side, and up it on the other. 
He could not resist looking into the faces of the 
persons who passed him, and wondering if they 
edited the Times. The lean man who was in such a 
hurry that wherever he had to go he would soon be 
there, might be a man of letters whom Rob knew by 
heart, but perhaps he was only a broken journalist 
with his eye on half a crown. The mild-looking man 
whom Rob smiled at because, when he was half way 
across the street, he lost his head and was chased 
out of sight by half a dozen hansom cabs, was a 
war correspondent who had been so long in Africa 



IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON 271 

that the perils of a London crossing unmanned 
him. 

The youth who was on his way home with a pork 
chop in his pocket edited a society journal. Rob did 
not recognise a distinguished poet in a little stout 
man who was looking pensively at a barrowful of 
walnuts, and he was mistaken in thinking that the 
bearded gentleman who held his head so high must 
be somebody in particular. Rob observed a pale 
young man gazing wistfully at him, and wondered 
if he was a thief or a sub-editor. He was merely an 
aspirant who had come to London that morning to 
make his fortune, and he took Rob for a leader 
writer at the least. 

The offices, however, and even the public buildings, 
the shops, the narrowness of the streets, all dis- 
appointed Rob. The houses seemed squeezed together 
for economy of space, like a closed concertina. 
Nothing quite fulfilled his expectations but the big 
letter holes in the district postal offices. He had not 
been sufficiently long in London to feel its greatest 
charm, which has been expressed in many ways by 
poet, wit, business man and philosopher, but comes 
to this, that it is the only city in the world in whose 
streets you can eat penny buns without people's 
staring round to look at you. 

J. M. Barrie, When a Man's Single. 

{By kind permission of Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton, 
and Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons.) 



NOTES ON THE PRINCIPAL AUTHORS 
QUOTED HEREIN 

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) is best known for his 
work in the Spectator, which he edited with Richard 
Steele. There is a special flavour about the humour 
of the Spectator, which delights readers now as it 
did in the early part of the eighteenth century. Sir 
Roger de Coverley is a notable figure in this journal. 
Thackeray's pen-portrait of Addison is given in this 
volume. 

Sir J. M. Barrie, the greatest living Scots novelist 
and dramatist, after a brief stay in Nottingham, came 
while still a youth to conquer London with his pen. 
He succeeded. Barrie's books should not be lent 
out — because borrowers like them so much that 
they will not return them. Margaret Ogilvy is this 
writer's story of his own mother. 

The Earl of Beaconsfield (Benjamin D y Israeli) was 
born near the Charterhouse School in 1804. His 
dandyism, and perhaps his Jewish nationality, 
awakened much prejudice against him at the be- 
ginning, but by sheer ability he gained a brilliant 
place among the novelists, and also became Prime 
Minister of England. Asked in early years where 
he stood, he replied, " I stand on my head." He 
did, indeed. There is an unfriendly Life of Beacons- 

272 



NOTES ON PRINCIPAL AUTHORS 273 

field by Mr. T. P. O'Connor, and a more generous 
one by Froude. 

George Borrow (1803-81), author of The Bible 
in Spain, Lavengro and The Romany Rye, was an 
authority on gipsies. He lived for a time a kind of 
gipsy-life himself, and his books are full of fresh air, 
green country, and picturesque people. 

Henry Brooke (1703-83). Kingsley said about 
Brooke's Fool of Quality that probably we could 
leam from it " more which is pure, sacred, and 
eternal, than from any which has been published 
since Spenser's Fairy Queen." 

Lytton Bulwer (1803-73) was born in Baker 
Street, Marylebone. His historical novels include 
The Last Days of Pompeii, The Last of the Barons 
and Harold. Besides excelling as a writer of fiction 
he was also distinguished as a scholar and statesman. 

William Camden (1551-1623), whose Britannia is 
one of our great history books, was one of the leading 
scholars of Elizabeth's reign. As tutor of West- 
minster School he taught Ben Jonson to love classical 
literature. 

Thomas Carlyle, thought by some to be our greatest 
philosopher, came to London in 1834. He wrote the 
French Revolution, and lent the MS. to John Stuart 
Mill, whose maid carelessly destroyed it. What 
Carlyle thought about this has never been printed. 
Sartor Resartus is reckoned his principal book, but 
his Heroes and Hero-Worship, which should be read 
with Emerson's Representative Men, is a treat. 

George Cavendish was a servant of Cardinal Wolsey, 



274 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

whom he followed loyally both in glory and disgrace. 
He wrote the Life of Wolsey, which, however, could 
not be published until long afterwards, owing to the 
bitter religious feeling which prevailed. 

The Earl of Clarendon (1608-74) wrote the 
History of the Rebellion in England. He was an 
advocate of Charles I., and would have applauded 
the men who cast the bones of Cromwell out of the 
Abbey. 

Charles Dickens was born at Landport in 1812. 
His bitter experiences in boyhood, related in David 
Copperfield, did not stifle his genius; for, at an early 
age, he made all England laugh and cry over his 
stories. Though not a Cockney, he was happier in a 
London fog than under Italian skies. He was the 
managing-director for Santa Claus in this country, 
and children owe him this debt — that they should 
read his books. Dickens was buried at Westminster 
Abbey, June 14, 1870. 

John Dryden (1631-1700) was one of our noblest 
writers of poetry and prose. Living as he did in 
stirring times, he knew and admired Milton. A very 
different person — Nell Gwynn — showed him much 
kindness. 

Sir Thomas Elyot (1490-1546). The work quoted 
herein, The Boke named the Governour, deals with 
education, and discourages corporal punishment in 
schools. The story about Prince Hal, which attracted 
Shakespeare's notice, is supposed to be of doubtful 
origin, but it is good enough to be true. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) was born at 



NOTES ON PRINCIPAL AUTHORS 275 

Boston, Massachusetts. He could say more in a few 
words than almost anyone of his century — e.g., 
" New York is a sucked orange." We can see our- 
selves as others see us in Emerson. If no examination- 
day approaches, a warm corner, and a volume of 
Emerson, are as near perfection as we can hope to 
attain. 

John Evelyn (1620-1706). His famous Diary, 
published in 1818, cannot be neglected by anyone 
who would know London of the seventeenth century. 
The events of an interesting part of our history are 
faithfully recorded by one who was at the heart of 
things. Peter the Great lived for a time at Evelyn's 
Deptford house, but when he left, Evelyn did not 
renew the invitation. 

Fitzstephen, secretary to Thomas Becket, gives 
some picturesque descriptions of London in the 
twelfth century. 

John Forster (1812-76) wrote Lives of Goldsmith, 
Dickens, and (partially) of Dean Swift. He enjoyed 
close intimacy with Dickens. When the novelist 
chartered a steamer at Blackwall to sail down the 
river, and verify information for Great Expectations, 
Forster was one of the party. 

George Fox (1624-90?), founder of the Society 
of Friends, travelled through every part of the land 
expounding his views. Like many another religious 
reformer he was bitterly persecuted, and more than 
once he asked Cromwell to give the Friends fair play. 
The best account of Fox is in his own Journal. 

Jean Froissart (1337-1410) was born at Valen- 



276 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

ciennes. He wrote the famous Chronicles, in which 
is found a vivid record of the times of Richard II. 

Thomas Fuller (1608-61) was an army chaplain 
during the Civil War, and afterwards chaplain to 
Charles II. He wrote The Worthies of England — 
a very entertaining book. Fuller is usually described 
as " quaint " — certainly his writings are full of salt. 

Mrs. Gaskell (1810-65) was the friend of the 
Brontes, and her Life of Charlotte Bronte is one of 
the standard biographies. Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford 
is a favourite book in the schools. 

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74) had a restless career, 
and died in Brick Court, Middle Temple. Someone 
said that " he wrote like an angel, and talked like 
poor Poll." He wrote plays, poetry and fiction. His 
Deserted Village is often quoted. The Vicar of Wake- 
field, with which is associated a good story about a 
vexed landlady and Dr. Johnson, is considered one 
of our greatest novels. Seeing what manner of man 
Goldsmith was, it is curious to notice what a liking 
he had for the words " assiduous," " assiduity." 
Goldsmith was a gifted man with a good heart, and 
his power was in the pen. 

John Richard Green (1837-83) was for some time 
a clergyman in Stepney, and made good use of the 
British Museum library. A Short History of the 
English People displays immense learning, and Green 
knew how to make his goods attractive. 

Edward Hall, a chronicler of the sixteenth century, 
tells what he saw in the reign of Henry VIII. This 
chronicler was admired by Shakespeare. 



NOTES ON PRINCIPAL AUTHORS 277 

William Harrison wrote the portion of Holinshed's 
Chronicle relating to Britain and its inhabitants, 
and gives a valuable description of the manners 
and customs of the sixteenth century. 

James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), whose poem 
Aboii Ben Adhem everyone knows, was intimately 
connected with literary men from Charles Lamb to 
Dickens. The latter formed one of his characters, 
Harold Skimpole of Bleak House, upon certain foibles 
of Leigh Hunt, but friends of both felt that the 
picture was unfair. A better view is found in Hunt's 
own Autobiography, in which also are many glimpses 
of distinguished writers. This writer gloried in 
London, and his book, The Town, is well known. 

Lucy Hutchinson, daughter of a lieutenant of the 
Tower, was born at that place in 1620. She married 
Colonel Hutchinson, the Puritan, who with others 
signed the death-warrant of Charles I. In spite of 
this, Colonel Hutchinson did not agree with Cromwell 
having too much power. The Memoirs of the Life 
of Colonel Hutchinson, like so many other invaluable 
books, was not written for publication, but since it 
was printed in 1806 it has thrown much light upon 
Puritanism. 

Washington Irving (1783 -1859), an American 
writer, came to Europe in search of health, and nearly 
got into trouble with Napoleon's police, who mistook 
him for a spy. He was happy when wandering about 
London, and wrote, " Old London teems with as 
much historical association as mighty Rome." Sir 
Walter Scott admired this writer. 



278 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

Samuel Johnson's name must be in many people's 
minds as they pass along Fleet Street to-day. He 
was an eminent scholar who lived in days when 
authors still sought the patronage of the rich. Dr. 
Johnson sought the favour of Lord Chesterfield, 
only to be repulsed; but the thing we know best 
about Chesterfield is the snub which he received 
from Johnson when the latter needed no favours. 
Johnson was a great talker, a pious Christian, and 
a staunch friend. Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson 
ought to be on every shelf. Born at Lichfield, 1709; 
buried at Westminster Abbey, December 20, 1784. 

Charles Knight (1791-1873) was an industrious 
collector of London information. 

Charles Lamb (1775-1834), known as " Elia," is 
one of our most beloved essayists. There was a 
tragedy in the family, and Mary Lamb, his sister, 
who with Charles wrote Tales from Shakespeare, 
became Lamb's chief care to the end of his life. 
There is not a finer story of self-sacrifice in our 
literary history. Lamb had a genius for friendship, 
and his circle included Coleridge, Hazlitt, Leigh 
Hunt, whom he visited in prison, and Talfourd, who 
wrote his Life. 

Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay (1800-59), son 
of Zachary Macaulay, the anti-slavery enthusiast, 
was born at Rothley Temple, near Leicester. He 
read everything, and remembered it. His History 
of England is as interesting as a novel, and whoever 
browses among the old records develops a great 
respect for Macaulay as a writer of history. His 



NOTES ON PRINCIPAL AUTHORS 279 

Essays are highly esteemed, and The Lays of Ancient 
Rome are also famous. Macaulay was buried in 
Poets' Corner, January 9, i860. 

Harriet Martineau (1802-76) was an able journalist, 
wrote some children's stories, and in her History of 
England during the Thirty Years' Peace gave a lively 
account of England between 18 16 and 1846. 

George Meredith, like many another — Browning, 
for instance — had to wait for recognition. Conse- 
quently he said some severe things about the British 
public, who were not entirely to blame. Meredith 
seems to go out of his way to be difficult. Let us 
say that he is an author for adults. Our best writers 
look upon Meredith as a master. 

Hugh Miller (1802-56) started life as a stone- 
mason. He became an editor and man of science. 
His Old Red Sandstone won the praise of Professor 
Huxley. 

Roger North (1653-1734) belonged to an illustrious 
English family. His Autobiography and his Examen 
are necessary to a study of the period to which he 
belonged. 

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), author of the celebrated 
Diary, gives the records of an eye-witness for ten 
memorable years, including the events of 1665-6-7 
(the Plague, the Fire and the Dutch assault). Besides 
providing a unique mirror of the manners of that 
age, the Diary reveals an amusing portrait of Pepys 
himself. Here we have another book which was not 
written for publication. It is universally admired, 
and sometimes imitated. 



28o LONDON IN LITERATURE 

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was born, and spent 
much of his time, in London. He wrote volumes of 
poetry, including the Essay on Man; his letters 
also are well known. Pope was rather a strange 
figure in literature — never happy unless he was 
flaying somebody. His tongue, like that of Dean 
Swift, often fell on men as if it had been a whip. 

Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859) is perhaps best 
known through his Confessions of an Opium-Eater. 
His essays, however, captivate all who read them — 
one on Shakespeare carrying all before it; and 
another on Judas Iscariot being interesting, but 
not convincing. De Quincey is a leading master of 
style. 

Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), one of the pioneer 
English novelists, wrote Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe. 
Richardson was a familiar figure in Fleet Street. 

John Ruskin, born in London, 1819, is renowned 
as art critic, lover of good literature, and friend of 
the working-man. He was an enthusiast on Turner, 
the painter, whose statue is in St. Paul's, and whose 
pictures may be studied at the Tate Gallery. Ruskin's 
Sesame and Lilies has been described as the best 
book for English young ladies, though why young 
gentlemen are not included is hard to say. The 
Seven Lamps of Architecture has created many a 
useful discussion. 

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), besides writing poems 
like The Lady of the Lake and Marmion, gave the 
world a long series of historical novels. If twelve 
well-read men were asked to name their favourite 



NOTES ON PRINCIPAL AUTHORS 281 

Scott novel they would most likely give twelve 
different answers. Ian Maclaren preferred The 
Heart of Midlothian, bracketing it in his affections 
with Thackeray's Esmond. Others give the first 
place to Ivanhoe, The Fair Maid of Perth, or Waverley. 
Only a genius could have produced so many lasting 
favourites. Scott did his best work while suffering 
misfortune, and some of his brightest pages were 
penned in times of agony. It is a brave story, fully 
told in Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott. 

William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-on- 
Avon, 1564, and died at the same place, 1616. In a 
recent examination the following was given as the 
subject for an essay — " Suppose you live in the reign 
of Elizabeth; write your autobiography." Well, it is 
a fine subject, involving a wonderful period. " There 
were giants in those days," and the greatest of them 
all was Shakespeare. Prince Lichnowsky described 
Mr. Lloyd George as a phenomenon. Shakespeare 
was a phenomenon. — Ask the teacher to explain the 
New Learning, and to show how it helped Shakes- 
peare. Then ask again what is meant by the Great 
Quadrilateral. — In many up-to-date schools they 
sing Blow, Blow, thou Winter Wind, Where the Bee 
Sucks, Sigh no more, Ladies, and It was a Lover and 
his Lass — all written by Shakespeare. 

Horace Smith (1779-1849) published Brambletye 
House, a tale of the Cavaliers and the Roundheads, 
in 1826. 

Robert Southey (1774-1843), poet and author of a 
long list of general literature, was related to Coleridge, 



282 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

and a friend of Wordsworth. He got into trouble at 
Westminster School for criticising the headmaster's 
over-free use of the cane. Southey's Life of Nelson 
stands high in our list of biographies. 

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster, 
wrote the Life of his old schoolmaster, Arnold of 
Rugby. His books on Westminster Abbey and Canter- 
bury Cathedral are crammed with information. George 
Arthur in Tom Brown's Schooldays re-presents Stanley 
as a Rugby boy. 

John Stow (1525 ? - 1605) knew London better 
than any man of his time. His Survey of London cost 
him immense labour without bringing any profit; 
and it has been indispensable to writers on London 
for more than three hundred years. 

Agnes Strickland (1796-1874), assisted by her 
sister Elizabeth, wrote The Lives of the Queens of 
England. She is regarded as an authority on the 
Tudor and Stuart periods. 

Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854) was the 
friend and biographer of Charles Lamb. 

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63). The 
name of Thackeray is often coupled with that of 
Dickens. They were both humorists, wrote fiction 
at the same time, and knew London as few have 
known it ; but although they sometimes wrote about 
the same subject, as e.g., the Fleet Prison, their 
books are entirely different in character. Everyone 
who reads Vanity Fair wonders why he has not read 
it before. Thackeray was at one time on the staff 
of Punch. 



QUESTIONS 283 

Bulstrode Whiielocke (1605-75) was an eminent 
lawyer of the Middle Temple. He lived in the times 
of Charles L, Cromwell and Charles II. In the 
Commonwealth he held responsible positions. Like 
so many other essential books, his Memorials of 
English Affairs was written for private use only, and 
for that reason its value as a record is all the more 
striking. 



QUESTIONS 

1. Mention two singular coronation incidents given 
in this book. 

2. Name some rebellions, or riots, and say which of 
them forms the subject of a Dickens novel. 

3. The Tower of London is referred to several times; 
give instances relating to the Tower and Richard II., 
Richard III., Henry VIII. , Elizabeth, Raleigh and 
Colonel Blood. 

4. Henry VII. is chiefly remembered for two things. 
What are they ? 

5. Give some of the great names of the reigns of 
Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, saying with what places 
in London they are associated. 

6. Name three eminent writers on London in the 
sixteenth century. 

7. What writers of historical fiction mention James I., 
the Cavaliers and the Roundheads, Charles II., and 
Addison and Steele? 



284 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

8. Describe the invasions of the House of Commons 
by Charles I. and Colonel Pride. 

9. If after reading Pepys and Evelyn on the Plague 
you wished for more information, what distinguished 
writer, not quoted in this volume, would you consult ? 

10. What literary associations can you connect with 
London Bridge, Westminster Bridge, the Strand, 
Oxford Street, St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey 
and the Temple? 

11. Who were some familiar figures in Fleet Street? 

12. Which two celebrated painters are named herein ? 

13. Say what you know about the establishment of 
the Foundling Hospital. 

14. What can you remember about the following 
schools: Westminster, St. Paul's, Christ's Hospital and 
the Charterhouse? 

15. Have any events of national importance, besides 
the making of laws, happened within the Palace of 
Westminster ? 

16. Mention some circumstances in Turner's life, the 
influence of which can be traced in his pictures. 

17. Oliver Cromwell is often blamed for Thomas 
Cromwell's deeds. Who was Thomas Cromwell, and to 
which centuries did Thomas and Oliver belong ? 



SUGGESTIONS FOR THEMES 285 



SUGGESTIONS FOR THEMES 

1. Several important books are quoted which were 
not written for publication. What reasons can be 
assigned, and what special value attaches to these 
books ? 

2. What is the most interesting feature about London ? 

3. If the violation of the House of Commons by 
Charles I. is to be condemned, can Pride's Purge, under 
Cromwell's orders, be justified? 

4. A fruitful theme is the fictitious element in history, 
caused by fear, or the desire to obtain favour, or by 
mere personal bias; and the element of reality in 
standard fiction. Sometimes actual facts are so stated 
by historians that they become an unsafe guide. Who 
would think that Clarendon and Carlyle described the 
same Cromwell? Whereas Sir Roger de Coverley and 
Mr. Pickwick are as real to us as those who created them. 

5. Another interesting theme is suggested by a survey 
of our literature. Publishers are said to fight shy of 
historical novels. But does the general judgment ap- 
prove more of David Copperfield than A Tale of Two 
Cities', or of Pendennis more than Esmond? Query: 
Is the reason that we have no Sir Walter Scott to-day, 
or is the explanation that experience is a greater asset 
in fiction than imagination? 

6. As it is impossible to carry all that one reads in 
the mind, discuss methods of referring. Mention words, 
local facts, books, and historical events, and suggest 
ways in which information can be obtained. 



286 LONDON IN LITERATURE 

7. It is recommended that Boswell's Johnson, and 
Talfourd's Lamb, should be carefully read; and that 
the names of friends of both should be known, with the 
works they produced. For example, a winter is well 
spent in which a pupil is introduced to Lamb, Coleridge, 
Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt — the last-named especially in 
his Autobiography. 

8. It is illuminating to compare the methods of 
various writers of the History of England. Compare, 
e.g., Macaulay, Green and Hume, not forgetting the 
differences of their scope. 

9. A most interesting subject is the growth of the 
English Constitution. Trace it from the Witenagemot ; 
make the men of 12 15 live again (showing pupils if 
possible the copy of Magna Charta in the British 
Museum, which the attendant will display on applica- 
tion), speak of Bohun and Bigod, of the struggle in the 
reign of Charles I., of the passing of the Reform Bill, 
and come right down to Mr. Asquith and the House of 
Lords. The stages are well marked, and it is a fascinating 
theme, touching the rise of English liberty. 

10. A good essay might be written on distinguished 
men actually born in London; while another might be 
suggested on great men who touched the depths of 
poverty in London, including one, from Bristol, who 
came to a tragic end. 



INDEX 



Bankside, 118 
Baynard's Castle, 37, 119 
Blackheath, 19 
Blood, Col., 128 
Boleyn, Ann, 47 
Brackenbury, Sir Thos., $j 
Bronte, C, 250 
Bunhill Row, 106 
Burke, Edmund, 194 
Burlington Arcade, 208 
Busby, Dr., 96 

Cade, Jack, 34 
Caroline, Queen, 220 
Charing Cross, 17, 109 
Charles I., 84, 88, 91 
Charles II., 132, 136, 138 
Charterhouse, 263 
Cheapside, 54, 242 
Chelsea, 46, 140 
Christ's Hospital, 191 
Coleridge, S. T., 205 
Colet, Dean, 50 
Cornhill, 54 
Covent Garden, 169 
Cromwell, Oliver, 100-5 

Dickens, Charles, 254-61 
Drury Lane Theatre, 72, 211 

Edward I., 17 
Eleanor, Queen, 17 
Elizabeth, Queen, 53, 60, 62, 
219 

Fawkes, Guy, 64 
Fenchurch Street, 112 



Fielding, 164 
Fleet Prison, 174 
Fleet Street, 177, 270 
Foundling Hospital, 158 
Fox, George, 103 

Garrick, 180 
Gascoigne, Judge, 30 
George IV., 262 
Gordon Riots, 173 
Gresham, Sir Thos., 124 
Guildhall, 26 

Hampton Court, 88, 157 

Handel, G. F., 158 

Hastings, Lord, 36 

Hastings, Warren, 188 

Haymarket, 154 

Hazlitt, Wm., 205 

Henry IV., 31 

Henry VII., 38 

Henry VIII., 41, 47 

Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury, 60 

Highgate, 29, 124 

Holborn, 112 

Hunt, Leigh, 191 

Hyde Park, 1 38 

James I., 67 
James II., 138, 140 
Jeffreys, Judge, 144 

Kean, Edmund, 211 
Kensington, 140 



Leicester Square, 181 
Lenthall, Speaker, 85 
287 



288 LONDON IN LITERATURE 



Lincoln's Inn, j6 

London Bridge, 25, 34, 46, 226, 

244, 259 
Ludgate. 121, 123 

Mall, the, 261 
Marshalsea Prison, 23 
Milton, 107 
Moorfields, 115 
More, Sir Thos., 45 

Nelson, 197 

Newgate Prison, 173-6 

Oxford Street, 222 

Parliament, 56, 64, 84, 98, 100, 

194, 227, 258 
Pitt, Wm, 194 
Pride, Col., 98 
Pym, 84 

Raleigh, Sir W., 74 
Reynolds, Sir J., 181 
Richard II., 20 
Richard III., 36 
Richmond, 62 
Rotherhithe, 22 
Royal Exchange, 114 

St. Bartholomew's Fair, 168 
St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 

122 
St. Clement Danes, 113 
St. Dunstan, 199 
St. James's Palace, 142 
St. James's Park, 131, 136 
St. Magnus, 35 
St. Martin's Lane, 63 
St. Paul's Cathedral, 119, 224, 



233 



St. Paul's Churchyard, 1 10 
St. Paul's School, 50, 1 10 
St. Sepulchre, 117 
Savoy Palace, 24 
Siddons, Mrs., 179 
Smithfield, 122 
Southwark, 34 
Strand, 87 
Swift, Dean, 155 

Temple, the, 202 

Temple Bar, 53 

Thames, the, 17, 21, 58, 126 

Thames Street, 119 

Times, the, 236 

Tower, the, 36, 45, 47, 53, 74, 

128, 146 
Turner, 169 
Tyler, Wat, 19 
Tyrrel, Sir Jas., 38 

Walworth, Sir W., 19 
Wapping, 144, 164 
Wellington, 198 
Westminster Abbey, 13, 15, 

216, 220 
Westminster Bridge, 197 
Westminster Hall, 30, 40, 91, 

188 
Westminster School, 94-7, 183 
Whitehall, 139, 140 
Whitehall Palace, 38, 41, 60, 

83, 103 
Whittington, Sir R., 27, 29 
William L, 15 
William of Orange, 143 
Wolsey, 38-41 
Woolwich, 113 



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